


In A Pitch Black World (Anything Goes)

by theinvisibledisaster



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Agatha Christie AU, Alternate Universe - 1940s, Angst with a Happy Ending, Crooked House AU, F/M, Minor Character Death, Murder Mystery, Murder as both a cockblock and a wingman, Mutual Pining, POV Bellamy Blake, Past Relationship(s), Slow Burn Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin, The Author Regrets Nothing, a lot of 1940s sexual tension, also i warn you before it happens, also it's a murder mystery so like... shit happens, an overabundance of longing gazes, but it's no worse than canon so, i mean it IS a murder mystery, idiots to lovers, none of the characters are treated particularly well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-05-19 02:13:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 43,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19347466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theinvisibledisaster/pseuds/theinvisibledisaster
Summary: He glowered over at his friend. “I’m not taking the case, Monty.”He looked down at the slip of paper with Clarke’s address on it; she was staying at the Wallace Estate. If she was right about Dante being killed by someone in her family, she was right in the middle of it. And it might have been six years, but he still knew her well enough to know that no-one would convince her to leave – nothing could sway Clarke Griffin from the path of danger.He groaned.He was absolutely taking this goddamn case.Bellamy and Clarke fell in love in Cairo in 1943, and then Clarke broke his heart. In 1949, Bellamy is working as a Private Investigator in London when Clarke turns up on his doorstep claiming her grandfather was murdered. No-one is above suspicion and the killer is poised to strike again.Or, the Crooked House AU that I've been *dying* to write for months.





	1. they all lived together in a little crooked house

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy fell in love six years ago and she broke his heart. 
> 
> Then she turns up on his doorstep with a fresh murder and a whole house full of suspects. 
> 
> Things are about to get complicated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys!! 
> 
> so, a couple important things:
> 
> 1\. I'd like to thank my friends, [Mira](https://clarkgriffon.tumblr.com/), [Abby](https://fen-ha-fuck-you.tumblr.com/) and [Lindsey](https://chase-the-windandtouch-the-sky.tumblr.com/), for listening to me complain and cry and throw ideas at them frantically, like some kind of tired monkey playing dodgeball with common sense, I literally couldn't have done this without you guys. 
> 
> 2\. When my original artist for the Big Bang dropped out at the last minute, I honestly thought I would be stranded without any art at all, but they searched around for me and found someone so quickly, which i am so grateful for, and i'm even more grateful that the person they found happened to be my good bitch wife [@chase-the-windandtouch-the-sky](https://chase-the-windandtouch-the-sky.tumblr.com/) (lindsey) who has done a FUCKING EXCEPTIONAL JOB especially considering her incredibly short notice and the fact that she was basically thrown into it with barely a couple of weeks to plan or execute anything. I'm in awe. And lowkey (highkey) in love with her, but we all been knew that already. 
> 
> 3\. I'm posting 1 chapter every day this week! On tumblr each chapter will be posted with one of Lindsey's character posters, and on ao3 I'll link to said poster, because the last time i tried to embed images into ao3 it took forever, was incredibly tedious, and i was ready to jump off the nearest bridge by the end of it. And it STILL doesn't work for everyone viewing it, so LINKS ARE OUR FRIENDS. 
> 
> 4\. This is L O O S E L Y based on Agatha Christie's Crooked House, both the book and the recent film (which is a really good adaptation, i highly recommend it) but it doesn't follow the plot exactly AT ALL (because that's PLAGIARISM, kids!) so if you have read/seen it, the ending won't be the same, and if you haven't read/seen it, it will still make complete sense! 
> 
> 5\. This is a murder mystery! The major character death warning is for both the murder that Clarke brings to Bellamy's desk, and a death that happens in a later chapter, but don't worry, i'll give fair warning before it happens, and before you ask, it isn't Bellamy or Clarke. this fic is for 1940s INTENSE BLARKE PINING AND ANGST not to rip out my own heart with a rusty set of pliers. 
> 
> ANYWAY, sorry about all the rambling, i had a good (and stressful) time writing it, and i really hope it all paid off. I hope you guys enjoy it!! <3 <3 <3

_Very few of us are what we seem.  
_ **Agatha Christie**

__  
  
There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile.  
_He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile._  
_He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse,_  
_And they all lived together in a little crooked house._

* * *

 

 

 

_**Cairo, 1943** _

Bellamy leaned out over the balcony, feeling the warm air curl around him. The view was spectacular, the old city sprawling out over the dry land, pyramids visible just before the horizon. The war was still waging all over the world, but in this moment, he could almost forget.

The biggest battles in Egypt had been fought barely a few months earlier, the Allied troops triumphing over the Nazis in November of 1942, and in the days since, Cairo had almost returned to its former glory. He’d been there, right on the front lines when the mortar was coming down, and when it ended, he’d lingered in the city. He was quickly picked up by Allied British Forces who were looking for men willing to stay in Egypt and keep an eye on the situation but not engage, and he’d done his job, right up until he saw a blonde woman being approached in a bar.

He wasn’t sure that punching out a guy trying to accost a woman counted as engaging in the war effort, but it certainly got him reprimanded by his superiors.

Miller and Lincoln, fellow soldiers, took him out for drinks that night as a giant middle finger to their commanding officers, and while they laughed over their beers, the same woman he’d defended the night before walked up to them. She stood over their table, arms folded and eyes ablaze, and decided to pick a fight with him. She accused him of “trying to act the hero” and “treating her like some common damsel in need of saving” and by the time she’d finished her rant, he was half-smitten already.

“Well, do you have anything to say for yourself?” She waited expectantly, tapping her foot.

He’d only grinned. “Can I buy you a drink?”

She froze for a moment before she closed her mouth decisively and took a seat next to him.

“Whiskey,” he said to the barman as he passed, sliding cash across the wood, “and whatever the lady’s having.”

“Whiskey’s fine,” she hummed.

Two glasses were placed down in front of them and Bellamy picked his up, swilling it slightly before bringing it to his lips. “So, Princess, what brings you to Egypt?”

The annoyance in her eyes at the name didn’t seem as genuine as the frustration when she’d first come over, and he had the feeling she liked the joke. All the same, she shook her head before she sipped her drink. “The Princess has a name, and she’s in Egypt on vacation.”

“In wartime?” He raised an eyebrow.

“If you knew my family, trust me, you’d understand,” she grumbled, knocking the last of her whiskey back like a pro.

“Fair.” He shrugged, not wanting to push his luck any further. “So what’s the Princess’s name?”

She couldn’t hide the twitch of her lips at that, but she made a big show of rolling her eyes in his direction. “Clarke. Clarke Griffin.”

“Well, Clarke Griffin, it’s nice to meet you.” Miller said suddenly, reminding Bellamy that he wasn’t alone at the table. “I’m Miller, this is Lincoln, and the handsome devil who came to your assistance last night is one Bellamy Blake – a complete idiot, but he’s got a heart of gold.”

“Ass.” Bellamy grumbled, but Clarke laughed and clinked her empty glass to Miller’s full one.

“Do you usually help Mr Blake pick up women, Mr Miller?” She asked.

“Only when he’s completely incapable of doing it himself.” He deadpanned. Lincoln snorted.

Despite their teasing, Bellamy managed to make a good impression, and Clarke seemed perfectly at ease chatting to the soldiers; completely unintimidated by them. She carried herself with the airs of someone who wasn’t intimidated by much.

When the night ended and he offered to walk her back to her hotel, she had followed him back to his place instead.

Three weeks later, he was leaning against the balcony of his apartment, watching dawn crawl over the city, and arms encircled his waist from behind. He leaned back into them instinctively, relaxing. She pressed her nose into his shoulder blade, humming softly to herself.

When she spoke it was muffled against his back, “It’s too early, come back to bed.”

He sighed, turning slightly to bring her around and tuck her into his side. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“S’okay,” she shrugged, “besides, I’m thinking it’s a good thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She blinked softly up at him. “You don’t have to report to anyone for another hour or so. We’ve got some time.”

“Time, huh?” He grinned, leaning down just enough that their noses brushed together. “Time for what, Princess?”

She slipped her fingers through his and tugged, leading him back inside, an easy smile playing about her lips and adoration in her eyes.

“Come back to bed and you’ll find out.”

 

 

* * *

 

__

_**Blake Private Investigation Agency, London, 1949** _

Bellamy was on a case when he heard about Dante Wallace’s death.

He was holed up in his office, running through receipts from the latest cheating husband job while Monty went through the pending cases and Harper answered the phones. The radio was on in the corner, playing that Nat King Cole song, Nature Boy, and he could hear Monty singing it to Harper in between calls, and the way she laughed at him as he did.

He pretended to grumble to himself about it, but even after all these years nursing his own broken heart, he couldn’t find it within himself to disparage their budding affections for each other.

As the song ended and the news bulletin began, he heard the familiar name and jerked up.

_“…passed away last Tuesday. Dante is survived by his two children and four grandchildren, and his widow, Josephine Wallace. His enormous estate will be managed in the coming weeks to determine who of his remaining family will inherit the business and his many properties. In international news, The Paris Foreign Ministers Conference is in its third week and has yet to reach an agreement about either–”_

“–Bellamy, you’ve got a client!” Harper called out from the other side of the wall.

“Who is it?”

“Uh, I’m not sure, boss.”

“Don’t call me that, and how are you not sure?”

“She doesn’t have an appointment,” Harper said, and he could hear her hurriedly getting to her feet and moving towards the door. “And she won’t give her name.”

The door swung open and Harper strode in, making a face at him that he couldn’t quite read. Bellamy frowned. “What kind of client won’t give…”

But he trailed off when he saw the woman standing in the doorway, arms folded over herself and hair shorter than the last time he’d seen it.

“Hey Bellamy.” She murmured, a tentative smile pulling at her lips.

He straightened. “Clarke.”

Harper’s eyes widened. “Oh god.”

He narrowed his own at her in warning. “Not a word.”

“No, yep, okay, I’ll just… leave you to it.” She said, edging out of the room as fast as possible and closing the door behind her. He was almost completely certain that she was filling Monty in on the details the second the latch caught.

The radio was still playing, that catchy new Evelyn Knight song that he’d heard one too many times, and it seemed too cheerful but he didn’t have the heart to turn it off. He couldn’t seem to do much of anything but stare.

She fidgeted under his gaze a little, but she didn’t look away. “It’s been a while.”

“Six years.”

“Is that not covered by ‘a while’?” She asked, teasing, but he was in no mood for it.

“What do you want, Miss Griffin? Or is it Wallace? Or Jaha?” He asked, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back in his chair. She finally looked away.

“Still Griffin. I never lied about that.”

“No, just about everything else.” He muttered.

She either didn’t hear him or chose to ignore it. “Look, I know you don’t want me here, and I know you don’t owe me anything and that I have _no right_ to ask for your help, but… my grandfather just died.”

“I heard.”

“I found him, and…” she hesitated, “and I think he was murdered.”

Goddammit.

He clenched his fist under the table and tried to maintain his cold façade. “What makes you think that?”

“The family doctor said he was in perfect health, and the coroner wanted his widow’s permission to perform an autopsy, which means _they_ have reason to believe it wasn’t natural, which means _I_ have reason to believe it was murder.”

“So the doctors do, but… but you thought it already, right?” He asked, and he hated the way her eyes lit up at how well he still knew her.

She bit her lip. “Well… Dante was rich – richer than richer than rich – and my family is… complicated.”

“You’re referring to all the crime?” He snorted. “Yeah, I know; what does that have to do with his death?”

“I think one of us did it.”

Well, that gave him pause.

“You’re accusing one of your own family members of murder?”

She nodded.

He sighed, pushing his folders to the side and leaning forward. “So go to the police, Miss Griffin.”

“That’s the thing.” She pushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear and he tried and failed not to follow the motion. “Dante might have been the one in charge, but my whole family has access to money, people, resources. Everyone has their price, Bellamy, you know that better than most. I… wanted someone I could trust.”

“Trust.” He couldn’t help but scoff. “You _left_ me.”

She stepped back, recoiling like she’d been slapped, and he could practically feel the hurt radiating off her, but he couldn’t bring himself to feel bad. It was her choice to go; her pain was entirely on her own shoulders. His, however…

She blinked rapidly, looking to the ceiling. “You’re right, I can see this was a mistake, I just… I’m sorry. Take care of yourself, Bellamy.”

With that, she was gone, and Bellamy finally felt like he could breathe. He slumped, energy dissipating along with her, and tried to remember the last time he’d been so exhausted. _The last time she walked away,_ his memories whispered cruelly.

Monty poked his head around the door. “You okay?”

_“Fine.”_

“Yeah, you sound it,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “I telephoned Kane, he’s gonna bring the autopsy down when he gets ahold of it.”

He glowered over at his friend. “I’m not taking the case, Monty.”

“Sure you’re not!” Harper entered, putting a mug of coffee on his desk. “I wrote her address down. And the telephone number for the Wallace Estate.”

“I’m not taking it,” he repeated, glaring at the coffee like it had personally offended him.

“Uh huh,” Monty nodded, mock-serious.

Bellamy growled, pulling the receipts in front of him and pointedly ignoring the two of them. He didn’t stop flicking through the papers until they left and the door was firmly shut behind them.

He looked down at the slip of paper with Clarke’s address on it; she was staying at the Wallace Estate. Therefore, if she was right about Dante being killed by someone in her family, she was right in the middle of it. And it might have been six years, but he still knew her well enough to know that no-one would convince her to leave – nothing could sway Clarke Griffin from the path of danger.

He groaned.

He was absolutely taking this goddamn case.

 

* * *

 

Marcus swung by in the evening, just as Harper and Monty were leaving for the night. He looked tired, but no more than he usually would, and there was a file tucked under his arm.

He strode in with the confidence of someone who’d never had to fear persecution, and Bellamy pushed down the tiny flare of envy he always felt in Kane’s presence. Neither he, nor Monty, nor Harper could walk around London with such self-assurance – too dark, too foreign, too female – it was part of why he’d liked Cairo so much. No-one cared what you looked like when the war was on your doorstep and the only thing that matched about your brothers and sisters in arms were the uniforms.

That was what he respected about Kane though; he never looked down his nose at the people around him, no matter who they were.

“Evening Mr Green, Miss McIntyre,” he said, tipping his hat to them as they shuffled past him towards the door. He paused a moment, “Miss McIntyre, I trust you are not making your way home _alone_ at this hour?”

She smiled, fond. “Not at all, Mr Kane, Monty is walking me.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” He said, looking more than a little pleased. “Take care you two.”

They waved as they left, and when it was just the two men left in his office – Kane’s hat and coat hanging over a lamp rather than the convenient hat-stand – Bellamy pulled out a bottle of whiskey and held it up in question.

“Just the one.” Kane said, politely accepting the glass Bellamy passed him. He sat back a moment, sipping thoughtfully while he squinted over at him. Bellamy exhaled through his nose, exasperated; he knew what was coming. Kane shook his head. “You’re taking the case.”

“I know.”

He raised an eyebrow. “In all honesty, I thought that would take more convincing.”

“So did I,” he shrugged, “but it’s Clarke, and she’s obstinate and headstrong and living in the same house as the people she suspects of murder. I’m not going to let her do it alone, even if I…”

“Hate her?”

“I don’t hate her.”

Kane regarded him pityingly. “Yes you do. You hate her because you loved her – because you _still_ love her.”

Bellamy didn’t have an argument for that. “Did you get the autopsy report?”

Kane was too good of a man to smirk at him, he simply looked _disappointed_ which was somehow worse. He pulled the file from under his arm and tossed it lightly on the desk. Bellamy picked it up, thumbing through it.

“Anything important?”

“He was definitely murdered.” Kane tapped the top of the page he’d landed on. “Eserine in his blood.”

 _“Eserine?_ But that’s–”

“Eyedrops, yes.”

“That’s… unusual. Not arsenic or cyanide?”

“Not a trace. And usually finding something so easily traceable would be a godsend in a case like this, but the drops were from his own cabinet. Mr Wallace was a known diabetic and the insulin bottle in said cabinet had a rubber cap which a syringe is drawn through to administer it. Someone switched out the liquids and his poor wife ended up injecting poison right into her husband’s veins.”

“His poor wife?” Bellamy raised an eyebrow.

Marcus winced. “A young woman – Josephine Wallace – barely older than Miss Griffin and married to a man quite literally old enough to be her grandfather. By all accounts she was distraught to discover her injection had been the cause of his death; went into a fit of hysterics and confined herself to her room for days. Missed the funeral. She isn’t the most likely suspect. She would have to be either colossally vain or remarkably stupid to inject him with the poison herself when she knows it’s something so easily discovered.”

“You don’t suspect her then?”

“I suspect everybody son, that’s my job.” Marcus tutted.

It was an old habit, calling Bellamy ‘son’. He’d been doing it since before Bellamy’s father died, although he couldn’t recall that himself, his father having died when he was only four. Marcus Kane and Charles Blake had joined the police force together, around the time Charles met Aurora, and had become fast friends. When Charles died, not in the Great War or on duty but of a simple heart attack one autumn afternoon in 1924, Marcus had stepped in and offered to help Aurora with everything she needed. A year later she fell in love with a man who pushed her around, and a year after that, Octavia was born on the kitchen floor while Bellamy helped and his sister’s father got blind drunk at the nearest bar.

When Bellamy turned sixteen, he applied for the army, hoping to make his father’s memory proud, and to provide for his family. It wasn’t until he was deployed in the great war at only nineteen years of age that his step-father told him that if he left, he wouldn’t be welcome back.

He had tried, lord knows he tried, but his letters were never answered, nor were his calls, until the day his mother grabbed Octavia and ran away with her. Bellamy sent half his pay packets to them every month until he was certain they were living comfortably, but once the battles were all over, he had no desire to return to America, had never had much of a life there. When Marcus moved to England at the end of the war, Bellamy was inclined to follow. He still sent his sister letters every month and she promised to visit him with her fiancé whenever they had the time. Now, Marcus worked for Scotland Yard and Bellamy had his own private detection agency, and they had a mutually beneficial agreement where Marcus passed him the cases that he knew Bellamy would do better solving and Bellamy handed him the ones that he didn’t have the resources to crack.

“But she’s not the _number one_ suspect?” Bellamy clarified, making a face.

Marcus smiled, shaking his head softly. “No. At the moment there are no outstanding suspects. They all look equally guilty and innocent, and they were all of them in the house on the night his murder took place. Any of them could have poisoned him.”

“Perfect,” he grumbled, handing the file back. “The worst kind of case, and Clarke is right in the middle of it.”

“Look, we’re investigating, but we’re running through all the official channels first, and we’re not making any moves to accuse the family until the will is uncovered.” He paused, tapping a finger against his jaw. “You’re a PI hired by a member of the family, you’ll be able to loosen lips easier than if we go in with uniformed officers. So I’m thinking you have two days or so to interview the family and do some snooping of your own before we come barging in there.”

“You think I should?”

“I don’t think you’ll forgive yourself if you don’t.” Kane got to his feet and shrugged on his coat.

“Not staying for dinner?”

“I’m visiting my mother, I’m afraid.” He smiled ruefully, but it quickly fell away into a thoughtful frown. “I know you want to keep Miss Griffin safe, son, but… she isn’t automatically discounted as a suspect simply because you care for her. Everyone in that house is a suspect, and you should treat them all as such. Everybody has the ability within them to kill – it’s a part of all of us and not a single person is incapable of picking up a knife or a rifle or, in this case, poison – Clarke Griffin more than most. She has a better heart than the rest of them, I know, but she is still a Wallace. Remember that.”

With that, Kane tipped his hat and left the office, leaving an uncomfortable, weighted silence in his wake.

 

 

* * *

 

 

_**On passage to Weathermere Mansion, 1949** _

The next morning, Bellamy got up bright and early and left Monty in charge of the ongoing investigations at the firm, making him promise to send word if anything went wrong, and then he got in his car and headed out towards the countryside.

It was a long journey from London to the Wallace Estate – quaintly named for the lake downhill from the house, Weathermere – and Bellamy used those hours to steel himself for the day he knew lay ahead. Not only of interviewing suspects, but of seeing Clarke Griffin again, of spending time with her, for the first time in six years.

By the time he escaped the traffic and reached the winding country lanes, he was clear-headed, or as clear as he was ever going to be. Not for the first time in the last hour, he glanced in the mirrors to see the road behind him and noticed a beige vehicle a few hundred feet to his rear. He wasn’t certain, but the car seemed to have been following him since he left central London.

He kept his guard up, but when he turned onto the lane that led to Weathermere, the tan car continued on the road past him.

He let out a breath. He was just being paranoid.

He was surprised to find the gate was already open and he drove through, arriving shortly in front of the house.

Weathermere Mansion was enormous, looming over the grounds with a strange kind of presence, ivy crawling over the walls and the windows oozing darkness from where it stood. The red brick didn’t seem warm or inviting as it did usually; instead it felt like a warning, to get as far from this place as possible. It sat on the tallest point of the grounds, one would be able to see it from the road if the forest wasn’t so thick in every direction.

He had barely turned his engine off before he heard the familiar crack of a shotgun.

His head jerked up, only to see a woman standing with her leg up on a nearby fountain, pointing her gun towards a patch of green. She pulled the trigger again and dirt sprayed in every direction. She swore loudly to herself before she turned and spotted him.

“Ah, Mr Blake!” She said, resting the weapon against the fountain and making her way towards him as he exited the car. She had the kind of smirk on her face that gave him the impression she rarely stopped. “I had a feeling you would be showing up soon.”

“You left the gates open?”

“Of course. We couldn’t have you stuck outside. What if Murphy had been the one to find you? He never would have let you in,” she teased. He had a feeling there was some truth to it.

“Did Clarke tell you I was coming?” He asked, surprised.

“Absolutely not,” her smirk widened. “Clarke has been practically unapproachable since she returned from London yesterday. She told me you turned her down, but I had a feeling you’d show up anyway.”

He ducked his head a little, not used to being so transparent, especially to a woman he’d never met nor heard of before this moment. He remembered his manners and stuck out a hand. “It seems you already know who I am, but I haven’t had the pleasure.”

She shook it firmly, “Charmaine Diyoza, but most of the family calls me Aunt or just Diyoza. I’m not particularly fond of my first name. It would have suited my sister far better.”

“I see, you’re–”

“My sister was Dante’s first wife, yes.”

He opened his mouth to ask something else, but she was distracted by the sight of a young girl who couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve running full pelt across the green.

“Charlotte Wallace if you fall and crack your head, I am _not_ cleaning up the mess, you hear me?!” She called out. The girl slowed down with a huff, clearly grumbling to herself as she walked more slowly towards a large tree in the garden. Diyoza turned back to Bellamy, rolling her eyes. “Dante made the mistake of getting a treehouse and now she practically lives there. She only comes inside for food, and to spy on everyone. She’s a bright girl, but unfortunately she was born female, so Cage didn’t put a lot of effort into teaching her anything worthwhile. I do my best, but I’m not exactly maternal myself.”

“And yet you stayed with them for so many years, helping raise the children?” He asked.

“If I hadn’t, someone would have been murdered a lot sooner.” She remarked.

He couldn’t hide the surprised bark of laughter that tripped from him at the joke.

She eyed him. “I like you, Mr Blake. I can see why Clarke does. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have moles to kill.”

Before he could stumble his way through another sentence, she half-saluted to him and strode back towards her gun, shouldering it as she headed towards the fields. He sighed and fixed the collar of his coat, turning back towards the house.

He raised a fist to knock, but the door swung open and he came face to face with a man barely a few years younger than him, hand already out for him to shake.

“You’re Clarke’s detective.” The man smiled, a genuine thing that softened his already gentle features. “Nice to finally meet you. I’m Wells Jaha.”

“The brother.” Bellamy realised.

“That is my chosen title, yes.” Wells dropped his hand to step aside and let him in. “Clarke is just getting dressed, she’ll be with us in a minute. I told her the outfit she was wearing was lovely, but she heard you arrive and suddenly decided she didn’t own a single dress that was good enough to greet you in.”

“Liar.” A familiar voice said.

Bellamy looked up to see Clarke on the grand staircase in front of them, leaning elegantly against the banister. Her hair was curled neatly, framing her face, and her red lipstick matched the red of the fashionable buttons on her black dress. She was breathtakingly beautiful, and Bellamy shouldn’t have been surprised at the way his heart skipped a beat or two by now. She always managed to have that effect on him; whether she was in a nice dress, old pyjamas, or nothing at all, he would always be completely floored by Clarke Griffin.

She was glaring at Wells, but there was no edge to it, and there was the warmth of a familiar smile in the corners of her eyes. “You spilled coffee on my skirt.”

“Alright, fine, I may have upended an entire mug onto the carpet,” Wells conceded, “but only a few drops actually ended up on you. You didn’t need to change.”

“I hate you,” she complained, but the smile had finally worked its way to her lips, only faltering slightly when she turned her gaze to Bellamy. “I thought you weren’t taking the case?”

“I never actually _told you_ I wouldn’t take it,” he shot back, and she scrunched her nose up at him to stop herself from smiling wider. The expression was so familiar that he almost felt as if he were right back in Cairo, warm air dusting them as she tried to hide her amusement and he catalogued every tweak of her cheeks. He shook the feeling from his shoulders and stepped closer. “So, where do you want me first?”

“I can answer that,” Wells said, right before Clarke grabbed Bellamy’s elbow and dragged him up the stairs.

“Go back to reading Pride and Prejudice, Wells,” she snapped.

“I’ll have you know I’m reading Persuasion, so joke’s on you!” He snarked back, disappearing through a door into what was presumably the library.

“Your brother is… nicer than I expected,” Bellamy peered into every open door as they reached the second floor landing and started down the corridor.

“Dante used to call him _soft,”_   Clarke was still holding into his arm. “He never meant it as a compliment, but Wells learned to take it as one. Considering who our family is, Wells is surprisingly… good. He’s a good man, with a good heart. We often joke that he’s the only Wallace who has one.”

“You don’t?”

Clarke released him, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a key. She turned a corner and he followed, pausing when he realised they were at the door to Wallace’s room. She unlocked the heavy, ornate door, and pushed it open.

“Is the door always locked?” He asked.

“Never.” She threw the curtains open, bathing the room in light. “Only since he died.”

The walls were covered in intricate wallpaper and the huge four-poster bed was in the center of the room, dark purple sheets made of what was clearly a highly expensive material adorning it. To the left was the door to the bathroom, he could see the claw-footed bath and the medicine cabinet from where he was standing.

He paced around, trying to get a feel for the place. “You said you found him?”

“I was bringing him breakfast. I was talking, I think, telling him about some argument that Murphy and Jaha had been… anyway, I didn’t realise at first. It wasn’t until I put the tray down that I noticed how still he was. I telephoned the doctor, and the police, and then ran downstairs to tell everyone.”

“You phoned the police from here?”

Clarke gestured at the large candlestick phone on the desk. “That’s his private line. The other phones, in the library and the foyer, are for the family.”

“I haven’t seen one of these since before the war,” he observed.

“Dante was old fashioned. He never liked to throw anything out, even if it was useless.” Clarke said, and judging from her clipped tone, she wasn’t only talking about an outdated phone. He frowned at her and she shrugged. “You haven’t met everyone yet.”

He crossed to the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. Kane was right – there were bottles of eyedrops on the top shelf and the insulin took up the entire middle shelf in the cupboard.

“What are you thinking?” She asked. “That’s your ‘I see something I don’t like’ face.”

He spied the door on the opposite wall and checked it, but it was locked from the other side. The bathroom could be entered from the rooms on either side of it. “Whose room is that?”

“Josephine’s.”

“Right. Who lives in the house?”

Clarke sat down on the ottoman by the window and hummed the way she always did when she was thinking. “All of us.”

He shot her a look.

She rolled her eyes. “This wing of the house belonged solely to Dante – all our rooms are in the east and south wings. Cage and Diana live in the south, with Murphy and Charlotte.”

“Their children?”

“Yep. They’re our cousins, but we call each other siblings. It’s an old in-joke.” She said, nostalgia creeping through. “We always said that we were closer than anyone else in the house. Certainly closer than Cage and my mother, anyway.”

“Abby’s older?”

“By about nine years, yeah,” there was a crease forming between her eyebrows as she tried to work it all out. “Abby’s the eldest, then Sofia, then Cage. Sofia fell pregnant when she was fifteen.”

Bellamy barely suppressed a wince. “That’s… young.”

“Yeah, it is. She died during childbirth and Murphy was left to be raised by Dante and Grandma for the first few years of his life. Then, Grandma died and Diyoza came to live with his. She wanted to adopt Murphy but Dante wouldn’t let her. By that time, I think we were about ten and Cage had just gotten married, so Dante forced _him_ to adopt Murphy instead so John was stuck with two people who hated him instead of the one person in this house who’s ever shown us any respect. It’s awful, but it’s another one of those family things that we just don’t talk about. I was born a few weeks before Murphy, so we’ve always been close, but he’s… angry. Angry at life for sticking him with Cage and Diana, and angry at Dante for not caring and angry at himself for existing.” She rubbed her eyebrow the way she always did when she was trying not to cry. “Charlotte was a surprise, I think. Diana never wanted children. Still doesn’t.”

“When did your father die?”

“When I was nineteen.”

Bellamy grimaced. “But… Wells is only two years younger than you?”

He could see the tension in her shoulders. “Yeah. My mom was having an affair with Jaha while she was married to my dad. The day Wells was born, Dante made Thelonius move into the house.”

“I’m sorry, he made the man your mother was having an _affair_ with, move in her and her husband?”

“That’s Dante.” She muttered. “His version of ‘cruel to be kind’. He was trying to punish my mother by rubbing her nose in it, but all it did was hurt my father. When he died, Dante made her marry Jaha just to spite her, even though he knew they didn’t love each other anymore.”

He scrubbed a hand down his face, trying to get all the facts straight in his head. “So Dante’s oldest daughter, Abby, has two children – you, from her marriage to Jake Griffin, and Wells from her affair with Jaha – and she lives here with her husband in the East wing. Dante’s middle child died in childbirth, and Murphy was given to Cage and Diana when he was ten and raised as their kid. They also have a biological daughter, Charlotte. Dante’s second wife is only a year older than you and sleeps in a separate room to Dante attached by the bathroom in which the poison was kept. Oh, and Diyoza, the sister of Dante’s dead first wife, also lives on the grounds. Is that everyone?”

“Yeah.”

“Seems like a fun place to grow up.” He quipped, trying to lighten the air, but it fell flat.

Clarke met his eyes.

“There’s no love here, Bellamy. This place, it’s… crooked. Broken.”

He tried to reconcile the tired woman sitting before him with the happy, flirtatious woman in Cairo and his heart ached to right all the wrongs that had been done to make her so weary.

“If someone in your family killed Dante, I’ll find them.” The determination surprised even him, but seeing the way her face contorted in distress as she described her family to him had made him realise just how afraid and alone she truly was. “I promise.”

“Please don’t make promises.” She glanced out the window. “Not here.”

He didn’t reply, just held out his arm. She slipped her hand around his elbow and got to her feet, and they started for the door.

“Is there anything else about this room that I should know?”

She shook her head.

“In that case, I think it’s time to meet your family, Clarke.”

Her grip on his arm tightened fractionally. “God help you.”

“It’ll be fine.” He realised she was steering him towards the east wing and he chanced a glance at her through his lashes. She was staring dead ahead. He shoved a hand into his pocket to avoid reaching out to her with his free arm. “Who are we meeting first?”

“Abby’s always in her lounge, so you may as well meet her first while I go find out where everybody else is spending the day. I presume you want to talk to them all separately?”

“That would be ideal, yeah.”

She pulled them to a stop in the middle of a corridor. There was a cold breeze blowing through from a large window that had been cracked open at the end of it. “The East Lounge is around the corner to your left. I’d rather not see my mother today.”

“Okay.” He frowned at her. “Anything I should know?”

“She’s an alcoholic, narcissistic ex-doctor with a temper. There’s a lot you should know.” Clarke said pointedly.

Nearby, a door swung open with the force of the wind and cracked loudly against the wall, startling them.

Clarke regained herself first, tutting. “This side of the house is the most exposed; the wind is always horrendous. We almost never unlatch the windows. I don’t know why that one was.”

She moved forward to shut it, but the hinge was stiff from underuse. Bellamy stepped in to help, and together, they managed to pull it tight and latch it. From this vantage point, he could see most of the grounds; Charlotte’s head was poking out the side of her treehouse, and Murphy was lounging halfway up a statue in the garden, carving something into the marble. Distantly, he could hear the pull of Diyoza’s shotgun, and there was a garden table between the flower beds with a teapot on it, clearly waiting for someone.

Clarke was humming to herself again, but it wasn’t her usual aimless, thoughtful noise, it was an actual tune. Not one he recognised though.

He straightened back from the view and nodded politely to her as he started towards the East Lounge.

He knocked at the door, and upon receiving no answer, decided to enter anyway. As he did, he heard the words Clarke had been mumbling to herself, louder now that she thought he was out of earshot. He paused, looking back as she pressed her forehead to the glass and lamented in a singsong voice, the end of a nursery rhyme he’d never heard;

_“And they all lived together in a little crooked house.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, thoughts? 
> 
> Any suspects yet?
> 
> Any theories? 
> 
> The next chapter will be up tomorrow, in which Bellamy interviews the suspects and motives and alibis become muddled.


	2. Curious Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The chapter with all the alibis, or rather, the distinct lack of alibis.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> onwards into the abyss laydeez!! And if you'd like to check out [ALL of Lindsey's amazing artworks](https://chase-the-windandtouch-the-sky.tumblr.com/post/186306001668/chase-the-windandtouch-the-sky-in-a-pitch-black) then click that link, and today's character poster is [Cage Wallace!](https://talistheintrovert.tumblr.com/post/186317156105/chapter-2-curious-things-he-leaned-forward)
> 
> I hope you enjoy it my lovelies!!

_“Curious thing, rooms. Tell you quite a lot about the people who live in them.”_  
**Agatha Christie, Crooked House**

 _“How can I go on living here and suspecting everybody?”_  
**Agatha Christie, Ordeal by Innocence**

* * *

 

 

_**Cairo, 1943** _

Bellamy rolled over, arm curling over Clarke’s waist and tugging her closer. The night came back to him in pieces – meeting Clarke properly, buying her a drink, which turned into four drinks, and then offering to walk her home. Instead, she’d gone with him back to his place and admired his bookshelves while he poured more drinks in the kitchen. He wasn’t exactly sure which one of them had moved first, all he knew was that they’d crashed into each other in the living room and didn’t make it back to the bedroom for a number of hours. He pressed his nose into her hair contentedly.

“Morning,” she said in response, nuzzling into his shoulder.

“Morning Princess.” He rumbled. “I was half expecting to wake up alone.”

She sat up a little, leaning over him. “I’m not that kind of girl.”

He grinned and cracked an eye open. “Is that so? And what kind of girl are you, Miss Griffin?”

She looked beautiful in the morning light, eyes bright and alert and her golden hair cascading over her shoulders and catching every ray of sun. She tilted her head at him, lips quirking upwards. “Are you sure you want to find out, Mr Blake?”

He nodded, leaning up to kiss her gently.

“Well then,” she said against his lips, “you’ll have to buy me another whiskey.”

“I will buy every whiskey in Cairo if it means you keep talking to me,” he said, only half-teasing, as he started trailing messy kisses down her neck.

 

 

* * *

 

 

_**Weathermere Mansion, 1949** _

Abby Jaha lay across the chaise like sherry-soaked fingers lie in a trifle – smelling strongly of booze and looking for all the world like she would never move from that spot unless delivered elsewhere.

There was a brandy glass dangling loosely from her fingers, and there was a half-empty bottle on the table before her.

“Mrs Jaha?” Bellamy approached carefully, sitting down in one of the armchairs. Abby sat up. She didn’t reach across to greet him, however, she simply poured herself another drink, offering Bellamy some. “Ah, no thank you, I’m working,” he said. “And it’s still morning.”

“Wait til you have children,” she waved a hand, “then you’ll be drinking day and night.”

“Your children aren’t children anymore.” He pointed out.

“You’re right; now they’re much worse.” She quipped, downing half her glass in one. “Now they want independence.”

“You don’t think they should have it?”

“It’s not about what I want, dear. It’s always been about my father.”

He leaned forward, propping his elbows up on his knees, “Are you upset, at his death?”

“Distraught.” She deadpanned.

“Is anyone?”

She actually seemed to think about that question for a minute. “His wife pretends to be.”

“But you don’t believe her?”

“Mr Blake, his own family isn’t mourning, why should a woman who’s known him barely more than a year?”

“Maybe _because_ she’s only known him that long.” He suggested.

She regarded him wryly. “Diyoza’s right, you’re smart. You _must_ be if Clarke likes you. She’s not good at making friends, you know. Always been a rather cold, closed off girl, even for this family. Spends too much time in her own head, and _far_ too much time around Dante, although that’s not her fault anymore than it is mine.”

“She’s your daughter.”

“And if you haven’t worked out that no-one is allowed to say no to Dante by now, you haven’t been paying attention.” She sunk back into the cushions of the chaise lounge and closed her eyes, lifting a shaky hand to cover her forehead. “Is that all?”

“No.” He pulled a notepad from his pocket and tapped his pen against it. “Can you account for your whereabouts between the hours of 7 and 10pm last Tuesday?”

“Why?”

“Because that’s when someone switched out the bottles.”

She sat up again, irritation flashing across her face. “Are you suggesting I murdered my father?”

“You just told me his death doesn’t bother you.”

“I was a _doctor_ Mr Blake, I took an oath to do no harm.”

“The operative word being _was,_ Mrs Jaha.” He flicked back a few pages to find the notes he’d made on her the night before. “According to my research, you were sacked for losing more than one patient due to substance abuse leading to neglect–”

“–it is a _large_ leap from neglect to deliberate murder! I would never do any such thing. I couldn’t.”

“All the same, I need to know your whereabouts, if only to rule you out as a suspect.”

That appeared to calm her, and the fire went out of her gaze as she poured herself another drink, spilling some of it on the table and making no moves to clean it up. She took a sip. “I was here. I fell asleep on the couch after dinner and didn’t wake up until Wednesday morning when Clarke was storming the hallways waking us all up.”

“Can anyone account for that?”

“I’m sure my husband came to check on me at one point or another, but other than that, I can’t say.”

“That’s not much of an alibi, Mrs Jaha.”

“And you’re not much of a man, Mr Blake.” She took another, heftier sip. “Too much false nobility and righteousness. When it really comes down to it, I don’t think you have what it takes to do what needs to be done.”

He didn’t have anything to say to that, so rather than reply, he got to his feet and nodded politely, exiting the room.

As he crossed to the hallway, he noticed something moving in the corner of his eye, and turned slightly to see Charlotte Wallace hiding behind one of the statues, scribbling something in a large green notebook. He crouched down in front of her.

“Have I done something to scare you?”

“You?” She shook her head. “You’re the least scary person in this house. I’m taking notes on the case, like you are.”

“Really? Found any good clues?”

“Not yet.” She said, closing her notebook and clutching it tight as if frightened he’d take it away.

He smiled carefully, not wanting to scare her off. “Well, if you find anything important, will you let me know?”

“Depends.” She hummed. “I’m not sure what counts as important.”

He offered her a hand and she took it, letting him help her up. “I’d say if you think it’s important, I’ll probably want to hear it.”

“You’re nice.” She said, walking with him down the stairs. “Do you think it’s important that Clarke is in love with you? Well, she was, in Cairo. I don’t know if she is today, but she probably is – I haven’t asked.”

He choked on air.

She was still talking animatedly. “I guess that’s not important to the case though. Unless she wanted to kill him so she could bring you here. But that would be pretty weird, and you don’t seem like the kind of guy who’d like it if someone killed an old man for you. Plus, we have telephones now, she could just call you if she wanted. Even if _you_ didn’t have a telephone, she could have written to you. Like Shaw does to–”

“–there you are!” A voice said, sounding relieved. Bellamy looked up to find a distressed looking man standing at the bottom of the stairs. He looked up from Charlotte with a tense smile. “And you must be Clarke’s detective.”

“Is that how I’m going to be identified from now on?” He pondered.

“Pretty much.” He held out a hand, which Bellamy shook firmly. “I’m Shaw, I’m Charlotte’s tutor, and our lessons were supposed to start _half an hour ago.”_

She whined. “But it was important!”

“What’s more important than learning maths?” He scolded, but there was a lightness to his tone that Bellamy hadn’t heard from anyone in the house yet, bar Wells.

Charlotte, to her credit, looked chastising. “Granddad was murdered, Miles.”

He blanched. “I noticed. You can’t use Dante’s death as an excuse to get out of lessons, Char. And Don’t call me Miles.”

Bellamy pulled his notepad out again. “How often are you in the house, Shaw?”

“I live here, in the servants quarters down by the kitchen. We don’t have a chef anymore, ever since Murphy taught himself to cook, and all the children are too old for nannies, so it’s just me down there.”

“Any other staff in the house?”

He shook his head. “It’s just me and Reyes.”

“Reyes?”

“Raven Reyes, she’s the mechanic, but she’s a bit of a jack of all trades – fixes the plumbing, mends the electricity, keeps all the guns in good shape – and that’s on top of tending to all the family cars.”

“She lives on the premises as well?”

“Yeah, over the garage. It’s at the other end of the south fields, down the hill. She comes up every now and then, but she mostly keeps to her corner. Her guardian, Sinclair, used to be the tutor but when he had an argument with Dante a few years ago, I was hired instead.”

“Huh. Sinclair doesn’t still live here?”

“Nah, he got out. Wanted to take Reyes with him, but she stayed.” He dropped his gaze, fidgeting slightly, and shrugged. “He was upset, but he understood, I think. Still writes her. He lives up in Manchester now, teaching poor families rather than rich ones – it suits him.”

“Good to know. Uh, sorry to ask, but, where were you last Tuesday between 7 and 10pm?”

Something flitted across Shaw’s expression, but it was gone so fast Bellamy suspected he’d imagined it. He shrugged. “I was in bed, reading.”

“Can anyone vouch for this?”

“Ah, no. I was completely alone.” He winced. “That’s probably not good for me, is it?”

Bellamy clapped him on the shoulder, waving to Charlotte as he made his way towards the front of the house. “I’ll let you know. Have fun studying, Charlotte.”

“I won’t!” She called after him, even as Shaw ushered her away.

He paced towards the main foyer, where Clarke was waiting for him, sitting up on the desk near the door. She didn’t quite smile when he walked in, but her features softened in a way he hadn’t seen in a long time, and she straightened slightly.

“I thought you were supposed to be a rich, respectable Princess.” He looked pointedly at the desk. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you you’re not supposed to sit up on desks like that?”

She snorted. “Like anyone in this house is respectable.”

“You’re sitting on the mail.”

“Well, I got tired of standing around waiting for you. Did you get anything from my mother?”

“She’s got no alibi for the murder, but then neither does Shaw. Where were you?”

Clarke sighed, sliding off the desk. “With Dante, discussing the business.”

“Alone?”

“Yep.”

“Great. This case is gonna be a breeze.”

“I told you my family was a mess, Blake. Cage and Diana are in their offices in the south wing, Diyoza’s in the garden and Murphy’s somewhere being antisocial, but that’s just Murphy.” She said, jerking her head towards a closed door. “Jaha is in there. He doesn’t want to see you.”

“Gee, thanks.”

She only squeezed his elbow supportively, disappearing through the same archway Wells had taken earlier. He straightened his collar and knocked, entering before he heard an answer. Jaha was at his desk, glaring at some paperwork, but when he saw who had come in, he turned the bitter expression on him instead.

“You’re Clarke’s Detective.”

Bellamy turned his resigned sigh inwards. “That’s me.”

“What do you want?” He asked, blunt.

“Your whereabouts last Tuesday night.”

“I was in here. I checked in on my wife once or twice. She was passed out in our living room in the East Wing. I called the London office a few times, I’m sure you can verify that.”

“I will.” He said, glancing around the room. It was like every other room in the house – cold and somehow detached – and he didn’t like it. “What is it you do for the business, Mr Jaha?”

“I run the legitimate fronts, Mr Blake.”

His face must have betrayed his surprise, because Jaha smiled knowingly.

“Expected me to lie, did you?” He folded his hands together. “Someone in the house has to run the legitimate fronts for all the shady businesses, or there would be no point in running an underground empire of villainy. I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything about the illegitimate businesses; Dante kept me in the dark on the details for plausible deniability. If you want to know about the crime, talk to the Wallaces.”

“Which ones?” Bellamy asked, just to be difficult.

Jaha tutted. “Cage and Diana. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have business to conduct. Not all of us have time to entertain Clarke’s ridiculous murder theories.”

“It’s not a theory, Dante was poisoned.”

“If there were any proof, Scotland Yard would be here, but all we have is you. A PI Clarke hired because she used to be infatuated with you six years ago. That doesn’t exactly scream legitimate.”

“The police have to wait for the final autopsy to be completed and the will to be discovered before they come down here. All they can do at present is ask you all not to leave town.”

Jaha barked a laugh, slapping the desk, but there was no real humour in it, only that same level of bitterness as when Bellamy had first entered. “They won’t have any trouble then. None of us are ever going to leave this _house.”_

“Mr Jaha, I–”

“–look, none of us want you here. We’re a suspicious family and we don’t take well to outsiders. But Clarke trusts you, for some reason, and that girl seems to have a good head on her shoulders, so I’m not going to kick you out – you can stay as long as you want – but I’m not convinced you’ll do any good.”

“Oh?”

“If Dante was murdered by someone in this house, I can’t see why that’s a bad thing.” He admitted. “Without him here holding our shortcomings over our heads or keeping our money hostage, we can all start branching out. I might even be able to remove the legitimate businesses from the other side of the family, never see any of them again. We could leave this blasted house and never return. That was never in the cards when Wallace was alive.”

“I suppose you had good reason to hate him.” Bellamy said pointedly.

“No more than anyone else in this family.” Jaha returned to his work. “Now, as I said earlier, I have important things to take care of, so if that’s all, you know where the door is.”

Bellamy turned on his heel and left without another word.

As he emerged, he spied Diyoza striding in from the garden, rifle tucked under her arm as she made her way in. He tried to catch her attention.

“Ah, Diyoza, do you have a minute?”

“Nope.” She said, not even pausing as she walked through the foyer and out another door.

“Right.” He said to himself. This was going to be more difficult than he bargained for.

He checked his watch. Been in the house barely a few hours and he already felt as if he were in too deep, becoming tangled in some twisted spider web he couldn’t see.

He still had six people to interview – seven if he included this Raven woman – and he was already exhausted. The house itself felt draining, like it was sucking the life out of him where he stood and he didn’t know how the family bore it. He didn’t know how _Clarke_ bore it. Not for the first time that day, the thought occurred to him that he didn’t know her as well as he thought he did in Cairo, and that shouldn’t have bothered him, but it did. Despite the way they ended, despite knowing that she was lying to him throughout their relationship, he had still somehow assumed that he knew who she _really_ was, underneath her grandfather’s name. But perhaps he was wrong.

He tried to reorient himself, looking around for any kind of indication where the south wing would be, but the house was a maze – and an enormous one at that.

“Up the stairs and round to the right.”

Wells was leaning against the doorframe, smiling congenially.

“How do you know who I’m looking for?” He asked, observing him.

The other man shrugged. “You’re working your way through the family, and Cage and Diana seem like the obvious next step. Plus, my father’s voice carries.”

“Ah.” He folded his arms, thinking. “And where were _you_ last Tuesday night between seven and 10?”

“I, uh, took the car down to Raven’s shop. It had been making odd noises while I was out in the afternoon, and I thought she could help fix it.”

“You stayed the entire three hours?”

“Longer, easily.” He glanced down at his shoes. “I don’t believe I returned to the main house until well after midnight.”

“Good to know,” Bellamy muttered, writing it down. “So, up and to the right?”

Wells nodded. “Not to sound too ominous but… good luck.”

“Only in this house would that sound ominous,” he said, starting up the stairs.

Wells mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like a sarcastic, “Welcome to Hell, we’re happy here,” before Bellamy made it to the landing and set off looking for the Wallaces.

He found Diana in a fancy looking sitting room, sitting in an armchair with a stack of files perched on her knees. This side of the house had clearly been designed by her – the pale wallpaper and the sparse, expensive décor seemed to match her style perfectly – and he idly noted that he hated it. He definitely preferred the older, more well-trodden part of the house to this new looking, sterile space.

She didn’t look up. “You’re Clarke’s detective.”

He schooled his expression. “Yep.”

“What do you want?”

“Your alibi for last Tuesday and your possible motives for murdering your father-in-law.”

“I sent Charlotte to bed at 7:30 and then I was in here with Cage going over some things for the business.” She clicked her pen a few times as she lifted her gaze from the pages to him, looking him up and down critically. There was a look of blatant distaste on her face. Or maybe that was just her face. “And for the second you’d probably have an easier time working out reasons I _wouldn’t_ kill him – there are less of those, it would take you less time.”

“You didn’t like him.” It wasn’t a question.

“Hated the man. Although I admit I respected his business and the way he ran it. Ruthless, intelligent, cold – I would probably like him if I didn’t live with him. And if he weren’t in the way.”

“In the way of?”

“Cage and I, taking over the business, ruling the empire on our own. Dante wasn’t going to live forever, but he was the kind of man who’d refuse to die for as long as possible just out of _spite.”_

“So you wanted him dead.”

“If you can find one person in this house who didn’t want him dead, even just a little, then I’m the queen of Sheba.”

He took her point.

The door opened again behind him. “Ah, you’re Clarke’s–”

“–detective, yes.” Bellamy turned to shake the man’s hand. “And you’re Cage Wallace, I presume?”

“I am. Are you here to arrest her, then?”

“Who, Clarke?” He asked, confused.

Cage scoffed. “No! That conniving bitch, Josephine.”

Bellamy frowned. “I’m sorry, have I missed something?”

“Obviously.” Cage said angrily. “She clearly killed him for his money! Gold-digging tramp, taking what’s rightfully mine–”

“–ours–”

“–just because she spreads her legs for him once a month! She was the one who had a door to the bathroom right next to her bed, the one with access, the one with the time, the one with the _motive_. She killed my father and if you don’t know that you’re a goddamn idiot.”

“Knowing something is true and proving it are different things.” Diana said, clearly bored of the conversation – or more likely, her husband – and looking back to the files on her lap. “Let the PI do his job, Cage. He can’t arrest anyone anyway, he’s just here to collect the facts before the police come in and trample over the evidence and bungle the whole thing.”

Cage was still seething petulantly, but he sat down in a nearby chair anyway and indicated that it was Bellamy’s turn to speak.

Bellamy wanted to punch his smug face.

“Mr Wallace where were you last Tuesday night?”

“In here, with my wife, going over some business.”

“For the whole three hours?”

“For the entire evening.” He pulled a metal cigarette case from his inside pocket and pulled one out, lighting it. “Didn’t even leave this wing of the house until Clarke started screaming Wednesday morning.”

“And is there any reason _you_ might have wanted to kill your father, Mr Wallace?”

“I _loved_ my father.” He said, right back to being angry again as he shoved the lit cigarette between his teeth and blew smoke obnoxiously in Bellamy’s direction.

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I assume I’m inheriting the business now that he’s dead, so that probably would have been a good reason, or maybe the fact that I was tired of him looking over our shoulders all the time.”

“You’re his youngest child, why wouldn’t he give the business to Abby?”

“Have you seen my sister? She’s a drunk, and an annoying one. No, my father loved this business, more than he loved any member of this family, and he wasn’t going to leave it to just anyone. It should be run by a real man.”

“You think you qualify, do you?” Bellamy asked, tucking his notepad away.

Diana concealed a laugh behind her hand and Cage snarled. “You’re a guest in this house.”

“And you’re a murder suspect.” He retorted.

Cage went rigid, eyes cold, and Bellamy had the feeling that if Clarke hadn’t vouched for him, he’d probably be waking up in a hospital bed somewhere, or maybe not waking up at all. For the first time, he really felt nervous about just how outnumbered he was in this house. He’d already been informed that Cage and Diana were the ones running the underhanded part of Dante’s organisations, so he probably shouldn’t go out of his way to offend them. Even if they deserved it.

“Josephine killed my father and I’ll make sure she pays for it even if I have to do it myself.” Cage hissed.

Bellamy took that final remark as his cue to leave, nodding politely at them both before he booked it out of there as fast as he could while still maintaining an air of cool collectedness.

When he made it back out onto the landing, he leaned over the bannister for a minute, mulling everything over.

So far, there hadn’t been any real alibis provided by anyone; they were all alone, with the exception of Clarke who was with the murder victim so had no-one to back up her story, and Cage and Diana who claimed to be with each other. He watched as Charlotte walked into view, and then a commotion happened somewhere out of view and she quickly hid behind a statue, pulling her notebook out.

It didn’t take long to realise what she was documenting, because Murphy and Wells came into view, clearly arguing about something.

“–telling you, Wells, I’m not going to cover for you forever.”

“I’m not asking you to, I just need some time.”

Murphy scoffed and Wells caught his wrist.

“John. Please. You know what this family is like. You know what would happen if they knew.”

He hesitated for a long moment before he seemed to give in. “Fine.”

“Thank you.” He sighed, relieved.

“Don’t sound so surprised, Wells. You’re my brother, you know I’d do anything for you.”

“You hate everyone in this house.”

“Not you. Or Clarke. And Charlotte is occasionally bearable.”

“So you just hate the authority figures then.” Wells grinned.

“What authority?” Murphy flashed his teeth and clapped Wells on the shoulder before he moved to leave.

As he did, Bellamy observed Charlotte tucking her pen behind her ear and closing her book, sneaking away towards the garden. Bellamy called down to Wells, who looked up in surprise, something akin to guilt flashing across his face before he settled his features into a cheery smile.

“Mr Blake. What can I help you find now?”

“Your grandfather’s widow.”

He pressed his lips together, scrunching up his nose in distaste. “She’s probably in the ballroom.”

_“Ballroom?”_

“Ballroom.” He confirmed, acknowledging the ridiculous extravagance of the house having a _ballroom_ with a wave of his hand. “It’s in the west wing, you can’t miss it. But, uh… she’s a lot to handle, especially since he died. She’s been drinking a lot, and I think she’s been sleeping in there most nights, playing music all hours and refusing to come out. She didn’t even come to the funeral.”

Bellamy nodded his thanks and made his way back past the corridor leading to Dante’s room, to the very end of the main hallway where ornate looking doors were sitting, half-open. As he got closer, he realised there was music playing, getting steadily louder the closer he got. One of those old Benny Goodman pieces with a lot of swing.

He pushed the door open a little further, poking his head through the gap. “Mrs Wallace?”

There was no reply.

He stepped fully into the room, taking in the gilded furniture and the beautifully wallpapered walls of the enormous room. Despite the general cleanliness of his shoes, and the fact that the place was designed for dancing, he felt rather awkwardly as if he should take his loafers off to step on the pristine marble.

“Mrs Wallace?”

“Oh don’t.” She snapped, and he whipped around, finding her lying on top of the piano dramatically, clad in only lingerie and one of those gossamer-thin robes with the feathered sleeves, a glass of red wine in her hand. “I’m not a ‘mrs’ anymore, I’m a widow.”

“Alright. What would you rather I called you?”

“Josephine is fine.” Her eyes raked down him, hunger in her gaze, and he shifted his weight uncomfortably. She finally lifted her eyes back to his face. “You must be Clarke’s boytoy. I’ve got to give the girl credit – she certainly has good taste.”

Bellamy took his earlier resolution back – he’d actually prefer to deal with Cage again over this.

“We’re not together, I’m here to–”

“–so you’re on the market?” She sat up, interested. “You know, I just lost my husband, I could do with someone to hold me through the lonely nights.”

“Mrs Wal- Josephine, all I need to know right now is about one _particular_ night – last Tuesday between 7 and 10.”

She pouted. “I don’t know. I was probably in here.”

“Is there anyone that can vouch for that?”

“No. Even if they could, they wouldn’t. Everyone in this house hates me and I hate them right back, except Wells, who I’m fairly certain is incapable of hating people. I don’t know how he does it.” She said petulantly.

“Right. Do you spend a lot of evenings in here?”

“I’m a singer, Mr Blake, this is where I come to practice. The sound carries _just_ right.” She hummed, lying back against the top of the piano. “It was why Dante and I had separate rooms to begin with – because I would come in here to write songs and lose track of time, and I didn’t want to disturb him coming back to bed. Although even then I worried about using the bathroom in case he woke.”

“You loved your husband?”

“Of course.” She smirked.

“But you especially loved his money.” He consulted his notes. “And if, in the will, he leaves his estate to you, you’ll come into quite a lot of it.”

Rather than morphing into a frown, her smirk only widened. “Naturally. That doesn’t mean I wanted my husband dead. I already had access to as much money as I wanted while he was alive. Besides, we’ve only been married a short while – what if he hasn’t updated his will to include me yet? It would be downright foolish to kill him so soon into our marriage.”

“Is that right?”

“It is. I was happy with the situation I was in, I didn’t want my husband dead.”

He appraised her silently for a moment. “I get the feeling you’re not as stupid as you pretend to be, Mrs Wallace.”

She closed her eyes and crossed her ankles where they dangled over the edge of the piano. “I get the feeling you’re not as unattached to Clarke as you pretend to be, Mr Blake.”

He didn’t answer, and she didn’t say anything more, so he retreated back out the door, closing it behind him.

However, when he turned around, he was met with the very brief sight of John Murphy’s angry face, and then a fist hit his face with a great deal of force.

The cheerful music was still audible even as Bellamy clapped his hand to his nose and dropped to his knees in surprise, groaning in pain.

“What the hell?!”

“I’ve been looking for you.” Murphy said, shrugging and offering a hand to help him to his feet. He eyed it warily, but took it anyway, allowing him to help him stand. He pulled a handkerchief out and dabbed at the blood now coating his upper lip.

“So you don’t like me.”

Murphy shrugged again. “You upset my sister.”

“Charlotte?”

“Clarke.”

Bellamy frowned. “When, what did I do? Is she alright?”

Amusement crept into Murphy’s expression. “She’s fine. I just needed to settle a score from six years ago. I owed you that punch. Now that that’s settled, you can ask me whatever you like.”

“She left _me_ in Cairo, why am _I_ the one getting punched?”

“She’s _my_ sister.” He said, like it was obvious, and to be fair – it was. If anyone upset Octavia, whether he knew the situation from both sides or not, he’d definitely swing a fist. Murphy shook his hand out. “Did you love her, or were you just sleeping together?”

He spluttered. “I’m not answering that.”

“Ah. You loved her then. Fair enough.” He leaned against the nearest wall. “Before you ask, last Tuesday night I was in the kitchen until eleven. I made dinner, and everyone was finished before seven, so I spent a few hours cleaning in there and then I baked muffins.”

“Muffins?”

“You got a problem with that?”

“No. You just don’t seem the type.”

“What can I say, I live for yeast and butter.” He pulled a coin from his pocket and started flicking it into the air. He seemed like the kind of man who struggled to sit still or keep idle for any length of time.

“It doesn’t bother you, cooking for the family?”

“Nope. I was the one that asked to take over, which Dante was more than happy to let me do, because it meant there was one less person to pay and it meant I was occupying my time. A lot of my life I don’t think anyone really knew what to do with me. Clarke and Wells are really the only members of this family I like, and I’d like Wells a lot more if he’d stop trying to make me a better person.”

“Oh my god! Bellamy, what happened!” Clarke dashed down the hallway towards them, only stopping when she was standing right in Bellamy’s space, fingers dusting down the sides of his face, anxious not to hurt him.

“Murphy hit me. It’s fine, we worked it out.”

 _“Fine?”_   Clarke asked incredulously. She rounded on her sibling. “What the hell is wrong with you?!”

Murphy only grinned wolfishly at her, like he knew something she didn’t. “I like him.”

She opened her mouth as if to retort, closed it, and then tugged on Bellamy’s lapel. “Come on, let’s get you some ice for your nose.”

Bellamy made sure to shake Murphy’s hand before he followed her, and the man himself twiddled his fingers in his best impression of a mocking wave as he watched them go.

When they arrived in the kitchen, Clarke made him sit on a stool by the counter while she went to fetch some ice. When she returned with it wrapped up in a thin tea-towel and gently pressed it to the bridge of his nose, he couldn’t look away from her. Her face was so close to his own, eyes crinkled in concern and concentration as she held his face still so the ice could work its magic.

“Will I live?” He asked softly.

She smiled, but there was sadness in it. “In this house? Debateable.”

He curled his fingers around her wrist, just wanting to be closer to her, to touch her. She closed her eyes, drawing in a shaky breath, and when she opened them, he was in danger of getting lost – that is, until the door from the garden burst open and Diyoza and Charlotte came swanning in.

Charlotte blinked widely. “What happened to you?”

“Murphy.”

Diyoza snorted. “Sounds about right.”

“Aunt Dee is taking me to the pictures.” Charlotte said excitedly, Bellamy’s injuries forgotten in the delight of her news. “We’re going to see The Third Man, that new mystery one!”

“Not Little Women?” Bellamy asked.

Charlotte huffed.

“I’m just teasing – I prefer the mysteries too.” He said consolingly, and the joyful expression returned to her face.

“I knew you would! Is that why you became a detective?”

“Something like that.”

“If you come back again soon, we could–”

“–come on kid, time to go; we don’t want to miss it.” Diyoza said hurriedly, clearly trying to the cut the tension Charlotte had unknowingly caused. To Clarke's credit, her only reaction to the statement was a slight stiffening of her spine as she swayed away from him slightly. The child probably didn't even pick up on it, but Diyoza was observant, and she seemed to be at least marginally aware of the situation between them.

She began to shuffle Charlotte towards the door, but Bellamy lifted a hand. “Hold on! Before you go, Diyoza, where were you last Tuesday night?”

“In the garden.”

“At night? In the dark?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Yes. What of it?”

“Were you gardening?”

“I was walking, mostly. It’s how I relax.”

“Hurry up Aunt Dee!” Charlotte complained, grabbing her hand. “Bye Watson!”

Clarke laughed quietly, leaning in to murmur, “I think that’s you.”

He rolled his eyes, but the false annoyance was belayed by his smile. “Bye Holmes. I hope it’s a good mystery.”

When they were gone and everything was quiet once more, Clarke stepped back a little, picking at her fingers nervously. He took over the task of holding the ice against his face and winced slightly when he pushed at it too hard. She looked worried immediately, but he waved her off.

“Speaking of mysteries…” She trailed off, leaving the question open.

He frowned, ignoring the twinge of pain it sent through his head. “I have yet to speak to the mechanic, but so far, not a single person has an alibi to speak of.”

“And everyone in this house is capable of murder.” She finished for him. “So we’re screwed?”

He ran his free hand through his hair. “Not yet. We’ve still got a day and a half before the police come through and your whole family clams up. I can get a lot done in that time.”

“You still think we can do this?”

“I don’t know. But we’re still breathing, right?” He got to his feet and dropped the ice onto the counter. “So let’s catch a killer.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What are you all thinking? I love hearing about all your ideas and theories, your comments make me happier than Josephine draped over a piano in a robe <3


	3. Those They Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bellamy shakes a few branches.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just so you know, the OSS is the precurser to the CIA, which didn't exist in the 1940s!
> 
> today's character poster is [DIYOZA](https://talistheintrovert.tumblr.com/post/186338859295/chapter-3-those-they-love-bellamy-lincoln), and you can find all the brilliant artwork lindsey did for this fic [HERE!](https://chase-the-windandtouch-the-sky.tumblr.com/post/186306001668/chase-the-windandtouch-the-sky-in-a-pitch-black)

_“I think people more often kill those they love, than those they hate. Possibly because only the people you love can really make life unendurable to you.”_  
**Agatha Christie, Crooked House**

 _“What are murderers like? Some of them, have been thoroughly nice chaps.”_  
**Agatha Christie, Crooked House**

* * *

 

 

_**Cairo, 1943** _

They were having dinner when he realised.

There was a restaurant in one of the quieter parts of the city they’d become quite fond of as they were less likely to run into people they knew and could talk in peace for as long as they wanted, and they were sitting in their usual booth, mid-way through the starters when it struck him.

He was in love with her.

“Bellamy?” She asked, reaching out for his hand. “You alright?”

“Yeah, fine.” He said, forcing a smile onto his face.

“Are you sure?” She leaned closer, lifting her other hand up to his forehead. “You feel a little clammy, are you feeling okay?”

There was concern in her eyes and she was touching his face so gently, and her thumb was running up and down his knuckles and he was really, truly, _stupidly_ in love with her.

“Never better.” He murmured, leaning closer to kiss her. The hand on his face curled upwards into his hair, fingers scratching lightly against his scalp. When he pulled back, he didn’t go far, and his lips were still almost touching hers when he said. “I love you.”

She pressed her forehead more forcefully against his in response, tilting up to kiss him again.

It wasn’t until there was an awkward cough from the other side of the table that they broke apart, to find a sheepish looking waiter holding their meals. By this point, Clarke was half across his lap, and they were both in quite a significant state. The server apologised for interrupting and put their meals down, offering them more drinks, which they gladly accepted.

Clarke didn’t so much move away as turn slightly, eating her food one-handed while still remaining tucked into his side, and he couldn’t wipe the smile off his face.

It was only after they’d ordered dessert that she sat up urgently, scrabbling at his shirtsleeves for purchase as she met his eyes.

“I can’t believe- I didn’t- I’m an idiot.” She huffed at herself, leaning in to kiss him again, just briefly. “I love you too, by the way.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

**_Weathermere Mansion, Afternoon, 1949_ **

Clarke had kindly shown him to the nearest telephone while she disappeared to have what he presumed was going to be a _serious_ discussion with Murphy about punching people as a form of greeting. He didn’t imagine it would make a difference, and she probably didn’t think so either, but for the sake of general decency, she decided she had to at least try.

He held the receiver to his ear and drummed his fingers against the desk, waiting patiently for the operator to put him through.

“Hello?” The voice on the other end sounded tired and he realised that with the time difference, it must have been quite early in the morning in America.

“It’s Bellamy, sorry.”

His tone immediately cleared. “Oh, hey, good to hear from you! How’s England?”

“Rainy.” He said noncommittally. “How’s Octavia?”

“Sleeping.”

“Like I said, sorry. I hate to wake you up like this, but I might need a favour.”

Lincoln groaned. “What do you need?”

“You’ve got the highest OSS clearance now, right? I need you to dig up everything you can find on the Wallaces, and especially anything that might make him a target from within his family.”

“Bellamy.” He sounded stern. “Tell me you’re not working the Dante Wallace murder.”

“I could, but I don’t like lying to you.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “I know, _I know,_ this is a terrible idea, I have way too much history with it and I’m already struggling to be objective where she’s concerned, but… she asked. And the entire family is living in this big mansion in the middle of the countryside and one of them murdered Dante and she’s stuck here with them.”

“What if _she_ murdered Dante?”

“Then I’ll deal with that.”

“Bellamy–”

“–can you please just… find the files? I can’t walk away from this, Lincoln, you know I can’t. But the quicker I work out who killed him, the quicker I get out.”

Lincoln’s responding sigh went on for far longer than was really necessary to get his point across, but Bellamy understood where he was coming from. Lincoln had been there in the aftermath of Clarke leaving and it hadn’t been pretty.

“Alright, I’ll see what I can do. I’ll wire you anything important.”

“Thank you, Lincoln, I mean it.”

“Yeah, yeah. Thank me by coming back to Washington for the wedding.”

“If I solve this case, I’ll even pretend to give you my blessing.” He joked, and the familiar noise of the call being disconnected sounded in his ear. He snorted and put the phone down, only realising that Clarke was standing there when he looked up. For all he knew, she’d been there for the entire conversation.

She folded her arms protectively over herself before she asked, “How’s Lincoln?”

“You don’t get to ask me that.” His good humour left in an instant, replaced by a bitterness he’d grown all too familiar with over the last six years. “It wasn’t just me you abandoned in Cairo, Clarke. Lincoln, Miller, Bryan – they all lost you too.”

“I know.” She murmured, eyes downcast. “I never meant to–”

“–where’s the garage where the mechanic lives? I still need to talk to her.” He interrupted, not wanting to listen to her excuses. He knew that whatever she offered in apology wouldn’t be enough, and he’d already spent years going over every possible thing she could have to say. He didn’t have time to live through any of them today.

“Down the hill, at the bottom of the south fields. It’s a bit of a walk, but the road goes down that far if you want a ride?”

He glanced out at the overcast sky – not yet raining, but brewing something in the clouds – and grabbed his hat from the stand by the door. “I think I’ll brave the walk. I need to get the lay of the land anyway.”

She looked more than a little crestfallen. “Oh. Okay. Can I do anything, or…?”

He shook his head. “Just try and stay out of trouble until I get back. Lincoln’s looking into some things for me, so at some point, Harper will probably ring the house to let me know his telegraph got through. If you could stop anyone else in the house from answering that call, I’d appreciate it.”

He offered her a half-smile, kind of an olive branch, before he slipped out into the garden and started the long walk down to the garage.

His head was a _mess,_ and he was starting to wish he’d let Lincoln talk him out of staying.

“You lost?”

The garage had come into view faster than he’d been expecting, or maybe he really was just that deep in thought, and a woman with grease smudges on her arms was leaning against the open engine of a car, eyebrows raised.

“You’re the mechanic?”

“Raven,” she admitted, wiping her hands on a cloth before she reached out to shake his, “you’re Clarke’s detective.”

“Bellamy.” He dropped her hand. “Can I ask you a few questions?”

“What, about my whereabouts when Dante was murdered, and exactly how much I wanted him dead? Sure. I mean, you did walk all this way.” She grinned. “Want a drink? I’ve got orange juice or really bitter coffee.”

It felt like years since he’d last had a cup of coffee, even if it had only been that morning. “I’ll take the bitter coffee. Is it hot at least?”

“I can manage that.” She limped across the room to put a pot into a little stove in the corner and turn up the heat.

“Do you mind if I…?” He gestured around the garage and she waved him away, giving him license to investigate. There were plenty of things in here that could kill a person - heavy machinery, poisons used in plumbing and gardening, and a large set of shears hanging on the far wall. “Gardening enthusiast?”

She shrugged, pouring the coffee. “Those are Diyoza’s. I’m not much for the natural world myself. But she asked if she could store some of her stuff so that she doesn’t have to walk all the way back to the greenhouse when she’s working down here.”

“She garden down here a lot?”

“Sometimes.” She jerked her head at a small, dusty table by the door, and limped over to it, putting the mugs down. He sat down, putting his hat on the table next to his coffee.

He glanced down at her leg and saw a hefty looking brace there, clunking slightly against her boot with every step.

“Polio.” She said, in answer to his unasked question, gesturing absent-mindedly to the brace as she scanned the shelves in search of something. When she found it - a jar of sugar - she glanced back at him. “I don’t get out much.”

She took the spare seat across from him and heaped sugar into her mug, pushing it towards him when she was done. He took it gladly, scooping two heaped teaspoons into the black liquid.

“So, last Tuesday,” he began, and she snorted.

“Not a smalltalk guy then? I like it. Yeah, last Tuesday night I was here, working on Wells’s car. I don’t think I finished until well after midnight, and then I went to bed.” She sipped her coffee and scrunched up her nose in distaste, reaching for the sugar jar again and dumping an obscene amount into her cup. “As for a motive to kill the old man, I’m not sure I have any more than anyone else in the house. He treated me like family - which means he treated me like I was beneath him and ordered me around a lot. But I get paid to be here - much like the family - and it’s better money than I’m ever gonna get anywhere else.”

“Now that he’s dead, are you going to leave?”

“Why would I?”

“Other people in the house seem to want to.”

She ran her finger around the rim of her mug, frowning at it. “I guess I hadn’t really thought about it. I don’t have any reason to leave. Who said they wanted to go?”

“Jaha and Murphy,” he gulped down some of the coffee - she was right it _was_ really bitter - and shrugged. “Although I get the impression most people wanted to get out from under Dante’s thumb.”

“You’re not wrong there.” Raven seemed to be struck by something, an idea, and returned to her feet. “Is that all you need to know? Only, I have a few errands I need to run - pieces of equipment to pick up and… whatever.”

Well that wasn’t suspicious at all.

He frowned over at her, but made his way out of the garage anyway, watching as she snatched a set of keys from a shelf and used them to lock the door behind them. She walked over to a little car at the edge of the building and climbed into the driver’s seat, waving as she pulled away.

She didn’t even offer him a lift back to the house.

Very odd behaviour indeed.

He began his own slow trek back, and he was barely halfway there when another vehicle ambled loudly up to him - a motorbike. He knew who it was before she took off the helmet, but watching Clarke’s hair fall around her face and the wind dust it lightly still felt a little like a punch in the gut. She was wearing trousers and a blouse now, and he couldn’t decide if this or the dress was worse, and eventually settled on the fact that no matter what Clarke wore, she would always look breathtaking. It was really very inconvenient.

She smiled anxiously over at him. “Harper told me to tell you that she has ‘more files than she knows what to do with, and if you expect her to go through them when she doesn’t even know what she’s looking for, you’ve got another think coming’.”

He laughed. “Yeah that sounds like Harper. Did she say what Monty was doing?”

“Yeah, something about a case involving a prostitute in some trouble and a politician who’s responsible? Apparently he’s going to be out of the office for at least tonight.”

“Well, at least _he’s_ getting somewhere.” He rubbed the back of his neck tiredly and he didn’t miss the way her eyes tracked the movement.

She hummed sympathetically.

“Do you need a ride back to the house?” He didn’t answer, but she seemed to sense his apprehension and completely stepped off the bike, turning it around so she could walk beside him. “Or just company?”

“Company works.” He admitted, fighting the urge to take her hand as they walked.

“So, no _prime_ suspects then?”

“None whatsoever. Everybody wanted him dead and nobody has an alibi, except for Wells and Raven who were supposedly down here. But _both_ of them have been acting suspiciously, so I’m not sure what to believe.”

 _“Wells?”_   She looked incredulous. “If there’s anyone in this house that I would swear blind had nothing to do with Dante’s death, it’s him.”

Bellamy adjusted his hat as the wind picked up. “Everyone’s capable of murder, Clarke. Everyone. Are you seriously telling me that Wells wouldn’t kill someone if he thought it would protect you? Or Murphy, or Charlotte?”

She was silent for a long moment, and when he glanced over, she was chewing her lip and frowning to herself.

“He would…” She said, before shaking her head fervently. “But I’d be the first to know. He can keep a secret, but he couldn’t hide something like that - he’d be guilty, jumpy - and he’d admit it the second I asked.”

“Maybe.” He said sceptically. “But I have no proof of that.”

The house loomed over them as they got closer, and Bellamy made a beeline for his car, waving idly at Charlotte who was hiding behind the hedgerow and scribbling in her book. She nodded seriously back, saluting.

He was half-in the vehicle when Clarke called out to him again.

“Wait!” She jogged over to him, helmet still in hand. “You’re not going back to London now?”

“I have to. I’ll be back tomorrow morning, don’t worry.”

A brief expression of panic flitted over her face, and her hand snaked out, gripping at the sleeve of his jacket. “Don’t… don’t go yet, please?”

He hesitated barely a second. “Look, why don’t you come with me? It’s a three person job and Monty’s out of the office.”

She slumped, relieved. “Okay. I just need to let someone know I’m going.”

“No need,” Diyoza’s voice said, a lot closer than he expected it to be. He’d been far too engrossed in the way Clarke’s eyes had been holding his to notice the woman’s approach. She was holding a small pair of secateurs and smirking at them.

“Uh. O-okay then.” Clarke narrowed her eyes at the woman, a mix of suspicion and something more fond. She walked around to the passenger side and got in. “Don’t let Murphy kill anyone while we’re gone.”

“No promises.” Diyoza teased, rapping on the bonnet of the car before she strode away, calling out to Charlotte, who scrambled further into the bushes in a failed attempt to hide.

Bellamy started the car and was immediately struck with the knowledge that he was about to be alone in a car with Clarke for hours. She seemed to realise the same thing and quickly grabbed her helmet from between her feet and reached for the handle.

“Actually, I don’t want to make you drive all the way back here to drop me off tonight; I’ll take the motorbike down.”

He barely concealed his wince at how she practically leapt from his car. “Are you sure?”

“Yep, just lead the way.” She called out, the door slamming closed decisively behind her.

He didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

**_Blake Private Investigation Agency, Late Afternoon, London, 1949_ **

When he walked into the office with Clarke in tow, Harper’s face did some kind of dance between about five different reactions before she settled on a friendly smile and an offer of tea.

Clarke accepted it gladly, and the three of them sat down with cups in hand, poring over everything Lincoln had wired their way about Dante’s business.

It was pretty much what he expected - all the legitimate businesses were fronts for his shady dealings, but there was no tangible proof, and every time the OSS thought they had any, it disappeared or became tainted somehow.

There were suspicious deaths in abundance - accidental drownings and car accidents and sometimes people just vanishing off the face of the earth - and Bellamy found himself getting angrier and angrier at every wrongful death.

“Sorry.” Clarke said.

He furrowed his brow at her in confusion.

“For dragging you into all this, I mean. I never wanted to, I just… I didn’t know where else to turn.” She curled over the edges of one of the pages in her lap, an anxious motion she kept repeating as she spoke. “I kept tabs on you, so I knew you came to England after the war, like we did. I knew you were working as a PI, and that Marcus was helping you.”

“You know Kane?”

“A little. He was in love with my mother for a while, before she met my father, and after he died, Marcus came around the house a few times to check up on us, make sure we were okay.”

“Wow.” Harper said, eyes wide. “He never told us that.”

“It’s been over for a long time. He’s probably moved on.” Clarke dropped her gaze slightly, blinking a few times before she said softly, “Most people do.”

Harper’s teacup clattered to the table, spilling slightly.

“Oh, _whoops!_ Would you look at that - clumsy! I’ll just clear all the cups into the kitchen and wash them. And then I’ll probably make another pot of tea. And I’ll go hunting for some dinner.” She ducked out of the room, the mugs bundled in her arms, being more than a little obvious with her pointed stare between them, and Bellamy wanted to get on his knees and beg her to stay but instead he sat there and watched her leave, dread rising in his chest.

Yet when he opened his mouth to say something, Clarke got there first.

“This is horrible, all of this. But Bellamy... Everything Dante was capable of, it’s… it’s like a disease; it’s hereditary. Our most common family trait is coldness, ruthlessness and it manifests itself in different ways, but it’s all part of the same seed. We’re all tainted,” Clarke said, tossing aside a folder with crime scene photos from yet another murder connected to Dante, “and it scares me sometimes.”

“Sometimes?”

She pressed her lips together. “Sometimes it’s necessary.”

“Like when you’re leaving everyone you care about behind so you can swan about Europe?” He snapped, not thinking.

Her jaw snapped shut and there was anger and guilt in the downturn of her lips. He expected her to snap back, but instead she just exhaled slowly. “Yeah. Exactly like that.”

When she stood up, Bellamy moved to stand with her, but she held up a hand and he froze. She grabbed her helmet from where she’d left it and ran her fingers through her hair.

“I hope you find what you’re looking for,” she said, gesturing at the pages. “See you tomorrow?”

He could run over there, grab her shoulders and shake her and make her tell him why she left, why she abandoned him, why she thought he’d even be willing to help after all this time, but instead he only nodded, pretending to be engrossed in the nearest file.

“Bright and early.” He said coldly.

The next time he looked up, Harper was putting three mugs of cocoa on the table and scowling at him disapprovingly. “Where did she go?”

“Home.”

“Why?”

“What was I supposed to do, not let her go home? She can do what she likes.” He growled, irritated, and Harper looked for all the world like she was about to sock him in the mouth.

Thankfully, however, she didn’t say anything; she just continued to help him look through the files, occasionally shooting him disapproving looks over her cocoa.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

**_Weathermere, Early Morning, 1949_ **

On his way back to the mansion that morning, he’d been certain that tan car was driving behind him again, but when he turned onto the road into Weathermere, the car drove past the turnoff, just like it had the day before.

There was something innately fishy about it, but he had bigger… well, _fish,_ to fry.

It was absolutely pissing it down, so he sprinted into the foyer without stopping to knock, shaking rain from his hat before he hung it over the hatstand. Charlotte was the first to see him enter the house, calling out for Clarke as he draped his coat out to dry.

“Figured it out yet, Holmes?” He asked, acutely aware of the dampness in his socks.

She huffed. “I bet I know more than you.”

“Oh yeah? What do you know?”

“I know that Wells wasn’t where he says he was on Tuesday.” She said matter-of-factly.

He froze. “What?”

“I can see the road away from the house out my window, and I definitely saw him walking down there on Tuesday night, in the _opposite_ direction of Raven’s.” She tucked her pencil behind her ear. “A car came and picked him up at the gates, I saw the headlights.”

But that didn’t make any sense, surely if Wells _wasn’t even in the house_ during the time when Dante’s medication was poisoned, he would have given that as an alibi?

A door swung open and Clarke strode through, this time in a green dress with a white belt tied loosely around her waist. She smiled at Charlotte warmly, but when she looked to Bellamy, it faltered a little. “Did Lincoln’s information help at all?”

“Yes, actually.” He followed her through to a small sitting room, devoid of people, with a nice view of the grounds. There was a small fire blazing in the hearth, and he found a chair right beside it, hoping it would go somewhere towards drying him off. They sat down in the armchairs across from each other, and Clarke crossed her legs, tapping her fingers on her knee expectantly. He glanced at both of the doors into the room, checking that they were alone. “Did you know your uncle was trying to stage a coup?”

Her eyes widened slightly. “No. But it doesn’t surprise me much.”

“According to the OSS records, they’d been tracking Wallace’s criminal activity, and it had been increasing lately in certain areas, but only ones that Cage had dominion over. It seems - at least according to their intel - that Dante had reprimanded him for it, or at least, that Cage’s efforts had almost completely ceased in the last few weeks.”

“That wasn’t common knowledge?” Diyoza asked, alerting them to her presence. She walked over and sat down on a nearby chair, tilting her head at them. “I heard him shouting at Cage one afternoon in his office. Dante threatened to disown him if he tried any kind of hostile takeover again, and made it very clear that it was only because of their blood that he was even giving him the second chance.”

Bellamy paused. “When was this?”

“Over a month ago?” She waved a hand. “Cage still isn’t over it, always storming around and making a spectacle of himself. He never really grew out of that _toddler_ phase of development.”

Clarke snorted.

Bellamy, however, was frowning. “That gives Cage more of a motive than anyone else in the house - he wanted to take over the business, and he’d already been thwarted by his father once, he knew he would get caught if he tried again. But if Dante was out of the way…”

“He’d get everything he wanted.” Diyoza finished for him.

“And Lincoln’s intel proves he’s willing to get his hands dirty.”

“Maybe too dirty.” Clarke mused. “He doesn’t seem the type to poison someone with something as simple as eyedrops. He’d more likely have someone attack him, or… I dunno, whack him over the head himself.”

Bellamy hummed, frustrated, and turned his attention to some of the art on the walls. It was all a little too stuffy and expensive looking for his taste, although one of the pieces near the window drew his attention for at least being more colourful than the others. The strawberry blonde hair of the naked women against the rich reds and greens was eye-catching, at least, but it felt familiar for another reason.

Distantly, someone could be heard slamming a door, and there was the sound of faint stomping, but it didn’t seem to be getting any closer, so he attempted to ignore it.

“Did you know Wells left the house Tuesday night?” He asked.

“What?” She looked surprised. “Really?”

When he looked at Diyoza however, she didn’t seem remotely shocked by the news. Instead she just narrowed her eyes at him. “Who told you?”

“You _knew._ ” He accused. “You seem to know a _lot_ more than you’re willing to say, Diyoza.”

She shrugged. “It’s the only way you can survive in this house. Who told you, Murphy?”

“Charlotte.”

“Irritating child.” She tutted. “She’s gonna get herself into a lot of trouble one of these days with all that sneaking around and spying on people. Someone’s going to catch her somewhere she shouldn’t be.”

Clarke glared. “Diyoza, where was Wells?”

“It’s not my business.”

“And yet you seem to be the only one in this room who knows.”

Diyoza shook her head. “I mean it; it’s not my story to tell and if he doesn’t want to tell you, he shouldn’t have to. All you need to know is that he wasn’t in the house when the insulin was poisoned. Don’t go digging up the rest.”

Clarke glared. “But this isn’t-”

“That’s very nice of you, Aunt Dee,” Wells’ voice said from the door and they all spun around to see him locking it so no-one else could come through. “But I think if Mr Blake is going to trust me, he probably needs to know the truth. As does my sister. I’ve been hiding it for far too long.”

“Hiding what?” Clarke looked up at him, all worry and sisterly love, and he chuckled, walking past them to stand at the window.

“I snuck out on Tuesday because… because I sneak out _every_ Tuesday night. And Fridays. And some Saturdays.”

Clarke looked like she was bursting with questions - and Bellamy definitely was - but they both knew instinctively that this was something Wells had to get through himself.

“I’ve been… _seeing_ someone.” Wells said, wringing his hands together as he watching the wind rustling the leaves of the willows outside.

“That’s wonderful.” Clarke murmured, gentle.

He sighed, but nothing about the motion served to relax him, in fact, he looked more wound up. He turned to face them, leaning heavily against the glass for support. “I’m… the person I’ve been seeing… it’s a man. I’m seeing a man.”

“Oh.”

There was a slightly awkward pause.

“Would he be willing to corroborate your alibi?” Bellamy asked.

Wells squinted slightly, bemused. “You’re not going to arrest me? Turn me in?”

“Do you want me to?”

He seemed even more confused, glancing between Bellamy and his sister as if for reassurance or explanation. “No. But… it’s illegal.”

“So?”

“So, you’re-”

“I’m here to solve a murder. I have no interest in what you do in your spare time. My closest friend appreciates the company of men, lives with one, in fact. Met him in Cairo some six years back. I’m not going to treat you different because of who you love, Wells, that’s none of my business.”

Wells let out this kind of choked gasp and brought his hands up to his face, trying to hold himself together. “Sorry, sorry, I was just… not expecting that.”

Clarke responded to that by smacking him heartily on the arm.

He yelped, flinching back from her.

“You _idiot!_ Why didn’t you _tell_ me?” She snapped.

“I’m sorry, did you miss the part where it was illegal?” He glowered. “I didn’t want to tell _anybody,_ I didn’t want anyone to be culpable if I was found out.”

“Well, that would sound wonderful, and stupidly noble, except that you told Diyoza, and _Murphy_.”

“No, he didn’t. I was out for one of my late night strolls around the garden, keeping an eye out for foxes, when his friend dropped him off. I saw them, and then he saw me, and he told me everything. And Murphy caught him sneaking back into the house one night last week. I’ve been checking that the coast is clear for the last six months, so that Dante didn’t find out, that's why I take so many late night strolls.”

 _“Six months?!”_   Clarke yelled, at the same time as Bellamy asked,

“Dante would have had a problem with it?”

Diyoza made a face. “Hard to say. But this family has an image to maintain, and he did always say that Wells was too _soft,_ too _nice.”_

“He probably wouldn’t have appreciated it, no.” Wells admitted. “But I wouldn’t _kill him_ to prevent him finding out.”

“I might’ve.” Diyoza said mildly. “If I thought he’d react badly.”

Bellamy ran his hand through his messy curls, trying to reset the timeline in his head. Something wasn’t quite right but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Before he could get too far with it, however, the stomping started again, this time louder and closer and definitely _angrier._

The doorknob rattled and then someone was banging on it.

Clarke got up to let whoever it was in, and when she opened the door, Abby and Cage were both standing there, fuming.

“A-are you okay?” She asked, taken aback.

Abby slunk into the room, looking sorry for herself, and found a bottle of port in one of the drawers, pouring herself a large glass. “The lawyers called. The will was a fake. We’ve been searching for the real one for the last hour, and there aren’t any. Not a single sign of any will at all, in the whole house. Which means-”

“-the conniving bitch gets _everything.”_   Cage hissed, forgoing the empty glass Abby proffered him and just snatching the bottle from her hands and downing some. “All his earthly goddamn assets go to that _airhead_ and her goddamn music. We’re screwed. Dante screwed us. One last middle finger to his family, s’fucking typical.”

Well.

That was interesting.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

**_On the way into London, Mid-Morning,1949_ **

After all the hullaballoo about the will, Bellamy decided that they probably weren’t going to be receptive to any of his questions for at least the next few hours so it was best to let the family deal with that news on their own. So he decided to take a trip back into London and visit Jaha at the office, ask him a few questions about what the lack of a will would do to the business.

The news program on the radio was chattering about Dante’s death, so he turned it up. _“...is being considered as a crime by Scotland Yard. They are currently investigating the family’s movements and looking for any outside influence. Scotland Yard released a statement announcing that Blake Private Investigation Agency was following down leads at the house and we hope to hear of an arrest as soon as possible. In other news, the French cat-burglar Lola Légère has struck again, this time at a politician’s house in London, leaving her signature perfume on the desk…”_

He was barely out of Weathermere before he noticed that same tan car in his rear view mirror again. and he turned off the radio and observed it, even slowing down and then speeding up to see if it kept with him. It did. 

So he made a minor detour.

He parked the car, spying the other one slowing to a stop further up the street, and walked up to the doorstep.

If Monty was surprised to see him at his house on his day off, he didn’t show it, simply invited him inside and offered him a drink and some kind of cake that definitely had hallucinogens in it.

“I’m good, actually, thanks.” He returned the offering to the kitchen counter, next to the others. “I need your help. I think someone’s following me.”

Instantly, Monty’s cheery demeanour dropped, replaced with alarm and determination. “What do you need?”

“I want him off my tail.”

He grinned. “I’ve got an idea.”

The idea turned out to be walking out of the house with a plate of cakes in hand and making a beeline for the suspicious vehicle, waving cheerily. Bellamy snuck out the side of the house and took the long way round, aiming to get behind the car before the person realised what was going on and bolted.

Monty rapped on the window. “Hi! I just noticed your car, you must be new to the neighbourhood. We’re all pretty friendly here - I came to offer you some welcome-to-the-street cupcakes, would you like some?”

The man wound down his window and made a startled noise when Monty practically shoved the plate into his face to display the different kinds of cake.

“Vanilla cupcakes, chocolate cupcakes, nanaimo bars - that’s my nana’s recipe, from Canada - and those little things are custard tarts.” Monty explained, beaming and repeatedly almost ramming the guy in the teeth with the edge of the plate as he waved his arm around. While the man was fumbling over a response, Bellamy tried the passenger side handle and - lo and behold - it opened easily, and he swung down into the seat, slamming the door to alert him of his presence.

“Hi.”

The man started yelling something, scrambling for his own door handle, but when he opened it, Monty made sure to push it right back, knocking him in the forehead with it.

“You’re not going anywhere.” Bellamy growled. “Not until you tell me why you’ve been following me.”

His arm snaked out towards the glove department and Bellamy grabbed it and twisted it, stopping him.

“Ah, _ah,_ shit, _okay,_ listen I’m police! I’m _police,_ okay? I was just reaching for my badge.” He whined.

Bellamy released him, but he kept a stone cold glare trained on him. When he did indeed pull out a badge, Bellamy snatched it off him, checking its validity.

“Alright, Sergeant Collins, why have you been following me?”

“It’s my job.”

“No, I don’t think it is.” He said, leaning back and rubbing at his knuckles menacingly. “Try again.”

He groaned exasperatedly. “I’m assigned to the Wallace case, keeping an eye on who comes and goes from the house and tracking their movements.”

“Just you, alone?”

“No, there’s at least two other cars on it.” He held up his hands. “I swear. It’s just an extra precaution, to make sure no-one makes a run for it.”

“Well, that’s boring,” Monty said, propping his elbows up in the window and taking a bite of his cupcake. “I was hoping for a stalker. Or a spy. Or at least some kind of shady crime family guy. Instead we get a cop who can’t trail people without being obvious about it.”

“Hey!” Collins said indignantly.

“I’m going inside.” Monty flashed a grin at them both, tossing custard tarts into their laps. “Bellamy, if you want to stay for lunch, Harper’s coming round.”

“Is she now?” He asked, climbing out of the car. “In that case, I think I’ll steer clear.”

“How’s Clarke?” Monty asked in response, already strolling back towards his house.

“Uncalled for.”

He only popped another cupcake into his mouth, talking through it. “I _knew_ you’d take this case.”

“Shut up.” He grumbled, jabbing a finger back into the car, “And _you._ Learn to tail people better. And stay out of my way.”

“Yessir.” Finn said, only a little petulantly, and Bellamy figured that was the best he was going to get.

He returned to his car, turning the engine over, but before he could pull away, Monty knocked on his window. He wound it down in question.

“Lunch.” He said, tossing a container across him. It landed with a thwump in the passenger seat, smelling faintly of garlic. “You’ll forget otherwise, and I don’t need that on my conscience while I’m trying to convince Harper to fall in love with me.”

“Won’t take much convincing, Monty.”

“Shut up.” His ears were a little pink. “Don’t you have an investigation to get back to?”

“Don’t remind me.” He patted his friend on the shoulder and thanked him, and then he was back on the road, driving towards the main office of _Mendax Mountain Corporations_ \- one of Wallace’s legitimate fronts.

When he arrived, he observed the fancy offices and the people striding around in suits and pencil skirts and it occurred to him that he didn’t actually know what the business did. All he knew was that it looked the part, as it was supposed to. He was certain that if he combed every inch of this place he wouldn't find a single pin out of place. 

He glanced at the name of the building, printed up on every available surface, and rolled his eyes.

_Mendax._

Latin for false.

Dante Wallace sure did have a twisted sense of humour.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you're still enjoying it! 
> 
> What are your theories, thoughts, queries??? Your comments make me gayer than Wells and his boyfriend (happy AND homosexual, we stan).


	4. we are what we pretend to be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There may or may not be some developments...
> 
> *raises one perfectly sculpted eyebrow* 
> 
> *raises the other, less attractively sculpted eyebrow*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> today's character poster is [JAHA](https://talistheintrovert.tumblr.com/post/186354814130/chapter-3-we-are-what-we-pretend-to-be-jaha), and you can find all the brilliant artwork lindsey did for this fic [HERE!](https://chase-the-windandtouch-the-sky.tumblr.com/post/186306001668/chase-the-windandtouch-the-sky-in-a-pitch-black)
> 
> I hope you're enjoying this story, because I sure do enjoy writing it my dudes <3

_“What I feel is that if one has got to have a murder actually happening in one's house, one might as well enjoy it, if you know what I mean.”_  
**Agatha Christie, The Body in the Library**

 _“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”_  
**Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night**

* * *

 

 

 

**_Cairo, 1943_ **

“She’s not who she says she is, you know.”

Bellamy was propping himself up on the bar at one of his favourite haunts, waiting for his friends to arrive, and he _had_ been idly thinking that he could just ditch this meeting altogether to go and spend yet another evening with Clarke when the voice interrupted. The voice in question came from somewhere to his left, and he frowned over at it, unsure if they were speaking to him or not. The source of the voice sat down in the vacant seat at the bar beside him and the barman passed him a drink with the kind of speed that assured Bellamy he must be a regular.

“Excuse me?”

The man took a long draught of his drink. “The woman you’ve been seeing. Clarke. She’s not who she says she is.”

Bellamy bristled. “Have you been _watching_ me?”

“Not you, no.”

_“What?”_

As Bellamy’s growing fury started to show on his face, the man sighed and stuck out his hand. “Pike. I work for the OSS, and your girlfriend is my current assignment.”

“What are you talking about?” He managed through gritted teeth.

“What did she tell you her name was?”

Bellamy’s jaw was working overtime. “Clarke.”

“Griffin, right?” Pike shook his head like he was impressed. “Did she tell you about her family?”

At Bellamy’s blank look, Pike whistled.

“Her mother is Abby Jaha – quite a famous surgeon, married twice, widowed once. Clarke was the child of her first marriage. She’s got a half-brother, Jaha, who she keeps in contact with pretty regularly. Any of this ringing any bells?”

It wasn’t.

“I only ask because her family’s in the news a lot, you see. Even out here, you can’t miss them. Her grandfather in particular. I believe he actually does good business with the armies out here through one or two of his companies, legitimate and otherwise.” He paused, glancing over at him to gauge his reaction before he said, “Dante Wallace. Clarke Griffin is a born and bred member of the Wallace crime family.”

And just like that, Bellamy’s world spun out of control.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

_**Mendax Mountain Corporations, London, Midday, 1949** _

Bellamy strode into Jaha’s office without asking. Jaha barely batted an eyelid.

“What do you want?”

“There’s no will, Josephine’s getting all the money.” He said, taking a seat and putting his feet up on the desk, just to annoy the man sitting behind it. “How much does that bother you?”

He sighed, resigned to Bellamy’s presence. “Not much.”

“Why not?”

Jaha paused, regarding him.

“Because I’m planning to divorce my wife and take my savings with me.”

Bellamy sat up, feet dropping to the ground, and stared at him, surprised. Jaha looked calmly back, fingers steepling over his lap. In answer to Bellamy’s unspoken question, he pulled a folder from one of the nearby drawers.

“I got my lawyer to draw up the agreement the day after I found out about Dante. I was waiting for the whole thing thing to blow over so I could tell her, but then it turned out he was murdered, so I’ve just been sitting on them, twiddling my thumbs.”

“Dante wouldn’t let you get a divorce.”

Jaha laughed with no trace of humour whatsoever, shaking his head. “The last person who tried to leave our family died, you think I’m going to ask?”

Bellamy wracked his brains. “Wait. You don’t mean…”

“Jake? Yes, I do.”

“Dante had Jake killed?” That… wasn’t good.

“I don’t have any proof, but yes, I believe so. He confided to me that he was thinking of divorcing Abby, and that he wanted to take Clarke and get out. He told me he was going to tell Dante, against my advice and three days later he had a ‘heart attack’. I don’t think he ever managed to tell either Abby or Clarke about his plans, and Dante didn’t know that I knew, so I never said anything. There was no point adding more pain to their grief.”

Something occurred to him then - something he didn’t want to acknowledge - and he folded his arms. “Could… Could Clarke have found out?”

Jaha pondered it a moment. “It’s possible. Highly possible, in fact. She’s a smart girl, and she’s had years to figure it out.”

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shitting shit.

That really wasn’t good.

That put Clarke right at the top of his suspect list.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

_**Scotland Yard Headquarters, London, Early Afternoon, 1949** _

Kane was midway through conversation when he noticed Bellamy trudging through the door, and he waved at him, quickly finishing up with the constable and calling over. “Bellamy, what are you doing here?”

“Oh, I need you to follow up on a witness for me, he’s the alibi for someone in the house, lives in your neck of the woods.”

“Of course, I’ll send a man on it immediately.” Marcus said warmly, clapping him on the shoulder as he led him through to his office. “How’s the case going, son?”

“Don’t ask.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Pretty much. It would be better if I didn’t have to shake one of your uniforms this morning, thinking it was someone dangerous.”

“Which uniform was it? I’ll give him a talking to.”

“Finn Collins, but there’s no need, I told him to back off.”

Marcus rubbed his beard thoughtfully, and there was an uneasy pause before he said. “Finn Collins was tailing you?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Because Collins isn’t allowed on this case. He has a personal connection to the family. I assigned him to a robbery in Canary Wharf three days ago.”

He blinked. _“What?”_

Marcus regarded him with apprehension. “Sergeant Collins dated Clarke two years ago. Or, well, almost. They went on a few dinners, until Clarke found out that he was also seeing someone else who worked on the grounds, uh, Reyes, is it? And he had been for the last year. It was a mess, but they handled it, managed to sweep it under the rug so Dante wouldn’t bring his wrath down on him… but Collins… he never really got over it. Still sends letters to Clarke, still telephones the house in the hopes she’ll answer. I ended up reprimanding him a few months ago and told him if he wanted to remain on my force that he would have to leave her alone.”

“So what is he doing driving past the house and following me?”

“That’s the question.” He strode to the door and poked his head out, calling to one of the officers. “When Sergeant Collins returns to the station, I need you to send him to my office immediately, understood?”

He returned to his desk, leaving the door half-open behind him.

Bellamy tugged at his sleeve, the way he always did when he was worried about Clarke. Which was a lot more often in the last day than it had been in a long time. “Should I warn Clarke?”

“If you think it’s necessary, then yes.” There was a container on his desk filled with apple slices, and he picked one out, biting into it as he leaned back in his chair. “Any luck finding the will?”

“You think there’s another one?”

“There has to be. Dante was clever. Ruthless and terrifying, but clever. If there’s a missing will, it’s _going_ to turn up somewhere. It’s just a matter of when.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

**_Weathermere, Late Afternoon, 1949_ **

Upon his arrival, the first thing he did was seek out Clarke to warn her about Finn’s erratic behaviour. However, when he told her, she looked unsurprised. “It’s fine, he’s harmless.”

“Harmless? Clarke, he’s a police officer, he’s harassed you before-”

“-how do you- oh. Marcus.” She grimaced. “He probably made it sound worse than it is. He’s not a problem. Really.”

“You went out on a few dinners with him _two years ago_ and he’s still calling, still writing letters, despite your clear disinterest? That’s a problem, Clarke.”

“But it has nothing to do with the case, so why do you care?” She asked, looking like she regretted the words the second she said them. She shook her head as if to clear it and forged ahead. “Look, if he does something worse, I will let you know, but in the meantime, have you figured anything else out?”

“Your brother’s alibi checks out, Kane sent someone to interview him. He said they were, uh, _talking_ until the early hours of the morning; lost track of time.”

Clarke’s lips curved upwards slightly; despite everything going on in the house, she still couldn’t help being happy for her brother. Bellamy felt a flicker of something like longing at her smile, and he loosened his tie a little, trying to push through it.

“So, Wells snuck in sometime after midnight, which means he’s got a solid alibi for the murder. In fact he’s the only person…” The little thing that had been niggling at him all day suddenly smacked him in the face. “Shit.”

“What’s wrong?” She stepped closer, reaching for him almost instinctively before she let her arm fall.

“If Wells’ alibi was in London…”

“...then Raven doesn’t have one.” Clarke finished for him, rubbing her eyebrow frustratedly. “I can’t believe I didn’t realise earlier.”

“You’re telling me.” He grumbled, forging towards the front door.

He wasn’t going to walk down this time - the clouds were still dark overhead and he didn’t want to get caught in the rain like he had the day before - so he unlocked his car, only realising that Clarke had been following him when she climbed into the passenger seat.

“What are you doing?”

“I want to help, Bellamy. I can’t just sit around doing nothing here. And… I _know_ Raven. We’re friends, or at least I hope we are. She might be more forthcoming if I’m there.”

He couldn’t really think of any argument to that, although he was sure that he probably could have come up with one if her perfume wasn’t invading his car and her eyes weren’t all _big_ and _blue_ and _earnest_ like that. He put his foot on the gas and they made their way down to the garage. The journey passed in relative quiet but for the soft music playing on the radio; the danger of that was that it felt too _normal,_ too domestic. It felt like something he wanted to keep doing with Clarke Griffin.

A day and a half being around her again and she was already slotting back into his life, like she never left. Taking this case was such a terrible idea.

They pulled up, finding Raven bent over the hood of an expensive looking car, and Clarke waved as they approached. “Hey! Have you got a minute?”

“For you? I’m sure I can find one or two.” She tossed her wrench into a nearby toolbox and wiped her hands on her trousers. “What do you need?”

Bellamy and Clarke glanced at each other, and he shifted his weight a little, trying to find the right way to ask. Eventually he settled on, “Where were you, Tuesday night?”

Her eyebrows drew together. “I told you.”

“Wells was lying to us. He wasn’t here.”

“Shit.”

“Were you lying to protect him, did he ask you to lie?”

“What? No. Why would Wells need protecting? No, I asked him to lie for _me.”_

His shock must have been evident because she groaned, resigned, and leaned against the open hood of the car wearily.

“If you weren’t here, like you said, then where were you?” Clarke asked.

She looked guilty, folding her arms.

“I was with Shaw.”

Clarke’s jaw dropped, and Bellamy just barely managed to keep his closed. “Uh. What?”

She made a face. “Shaw and me, we’re… y’know, we’ve been… I’m…”

“Oh my god you’re in love with Zeke Shaw.” Clarke said, dumbstruck. “I cannot believe you’re in love with _Zeke Shaw._ How long?”

She looked uncomfortable. “Nearly a year.”

_“Nearly a year?!”_

“I’m sorry! I wanted to tell you, I did, but we couldn’t tell _anyone._ If Dante found out, he would have fired us and you know it. And then once he died it was just… there was never a right time to bring it up, and we were worried Cage and Diana would have the same attitude and kick us out.”

Bellamy let the information slot into his brain while Clarke interrogated Raven for more information on her relationship, only piping up when he had worked out the new timeline for Tuesday night. “So, when Shaw said he was in his room _alone,_ you were actually there? You were his alibi?”

“Yeah. I stayed all night, didn’t leave until the next morning. I had only just arrived back here when the ambulance turned up.”

Bellamy scribbled it all down in his notepad and thanked her for her honesty, promising not to reveal her secret to anyone else, and then he and Clarke returned to the car and drove back towards the mansion. She seemed to be mulling over Raven’s secret, picking at her nails idly as she looked out the window.

“You alright?”

She shrugged. “It’s just… first Wells, now Raven? They’re the people in the house I actually _trust_ and they’ve been keeping huge secrets. What about the rest of them?”

Bellamy knew that Clarke wasn’t really looking for an answer, or even for reassurance, she just wanted to know that he was right there with her, so he reached across and squeezed her hand, briefly, before he let it drop. They pulled up and got out of the car, both of them seeming to hesitate before they entered the house.

“You talking to Shaw?” She asked, eyes focussed somewhere near his shoulder.

“Yeah, corroborate the alibi, make sure his information matches up. You gonna be okay?”

She looked him in the eye then, a little helplessly, but she still nodded. “Yeah, I’ll go tell Wells he’s in the clear. Shaw’ll be with Charlotte in the library.”

They split up, Bellamy going one way and Clarke going the other, and he didn’t bother pretending he couldn’t feel the pang in his chest as she walked away.

The library was huge, and it was the first room in the entire mansion that Bellamy had walked into and actually felt comfortable in. It didn’t exude malice like every other room in the house, and he breathed a little easier as he wound his way through the shelves.

He found them in a little nook in the corner, Charlotte pouring over a book while Shaw explained something to her in hushed tones. He looked up when he heard Bellamy approaching, observing him curiously.

“Mr Blake, to what do we owe the pleasure?”

“I’d like to go over your alibi for the time Dante’s medication was switched.”

He scowled. “I already told you, I don’t have one.”

“Mm, but that wasn’t true, was it?”

“Oh.” He looked away guiltily. “She told you?”

Charlotte put the book down, giving up the pretence that she wasn’t listening to them. “Who told you what?”

Bellamy hesitated, but the girl rolled her eyes dramatically.

“Oh, this is about _Raven.”_ She elbowed Shaw. “I’ve known for ages.”

“What?!” He asked, alarmed.

Charlotte only tutted at him. “People in this house don’t notice me much, but I notice them. I see Raven sneaking out in the mornings. And I’ve seen you writing letters to her, and her replies always ending up with the mail even though the postman didn’t deliver anything. Just cause I’m a kid doesn’t mean I’m an idiot, you know.”

“No I suppose not,” he teased, once he regained his composure. He glanced at Bellamy. “Uh, yeah, she was here. Got in at six-thirty and didn’t leave until the morning, and then I found out about Dante. I would have said something earlier, but this family… I wasn’t sure what would happen.”

Bellamy tilted his head in some vague form of assent.

“Are you sticking around a while?” Charlotte asked.

“Yeah, at least the afternoon. Why, you got some more information for me?” He asked.

“Not yet, but I’m sure I’ll think of something.”

“Thank you.” He said, half-amused.

“Plus,” Charlotte squinted up at him. “We’re due another murder, don’t you think Watson?"

He put his hands on his hips, looking down at her in surprise. “Why do you say that?”

“That’s how it always is in detective stories,” she said, as if it were obvious, “there’s always a second murder, especially when the detective has too many suspects. Someone who knows something they’re not supposed to know, or was the meanest.”

“So if Cage could just kick the bucket…” Shaw muttered to himself, making Bellamy choke on air in his effort not to laugh.

“Keep an eye out for clues, Holmes,” Bellamy said, stepping away. “And don’t leave town, Shaw.”

“Not a chance.” He grinned. “Reyes is still here.”

Bellamy chuckled, and paced away through the stacks, taking his time out of the library; stroking his fingers along the spines of the books. His knuckle scraped on one that was sticking out and he tugged at it - _While The Light Lasts,_ by Agatha Christie - an interesting book, sure, but what caught his eye was the cover. There were butterflies and moths on it, and it reminded him of when Octavia was younger and carefree and playing with butterflies in the garden, and now she was an adult and waiting to get married. Soon she’d have a different last name and he wouldn’t-

Wait.

Something almost occurred to him, but he couldn’t quite reach it.

He pulled his notebook out, flipping through the pages until he found Josephine’s. _Lightbourne,_ she said her maiden name was. Marcus had looked into her - parents both deceased, no other family to speak of - but something about her last name was niggling at him. Perhaps it was just the coincidence of her name and the title of the book in his hands matching, but he had the feeling it was something more than that.

He returned the book to the shelf and continued out into the garden, where Diyoza was crouching down by the rose bushes with that pair of secateurs in her hand and Abby was standing over her, whispering in harsh tones. She cut herself off when she noticed Bellamy, and he tilted his head, filing that information away even as she stormed off. Diyoza just continued calmly cutting the rosebuds off the bush.

“Did you know about Raven and Shaw?”

She frowned. “I had my suspicions, but I never looked too closely. Don’t go looking for information you don’t need, Blake, it saves a lot of time.”

“You don’t think that’s something you needed to know?”

“As long as neither of them were planning on leaving, they were safe. I didn’t need to know anything more than that. If they decided to run off together, I promise you, I would know, but until then I don’t need to concern myself with their relationship. It _is_ a relationship yes? Not an affair?”

“They’re in love, apparently.”

She snipped another flower off. “You sound sceptical.”

“No, just jaded.”

“Ah.” She peered over at him, calculating, but when she spoke her tone was surprisingly gentle. “She never wanted to hurt you, you know.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I can. She wrote to me before she left Cairo, explaining the whole thing. She had her reasons for leaving, Bellamy, and for lying.”

“What reasons are those?” He asked sarcastically, pressing the heel of his shoe into the dirt.

“Not mine to give.” She pocketed the secateurs and got to her feet, and there was a world-weariness about her that Bellamy found all too familiar. He wondered how tiring it must be trying to stay on top of everything in the house, to keep the water from rippling and attracting Dante’s attention. He imagined it must take a toll, must wear a person down. That _could_ explain her wry cynicism but Bellamy had a feeling Diyoza had been born that way.

“Is there any other way of getting onto the grounds, other than the front gate?”

“Why do you ask?”

He glared at her.

She smirked. “Only the old trail entrance, from when we used to have horses, before Dante sent them off to the races in Cornwall. I think it comes out somewhere near the east wing, but no-one’s used it for a few years.”

“Does anyone know about it, other than the people in the house?”

“A few people, but none that would have wanted to kill Dante.”

“Would Finn Collins?”

She paused. “Finn Collins? Why are you asking about him?”

“Would he know about the side gate?” He watched as she mulled it over.

“There’s a good chance, yes.”

Oh excellent, just _excellent._ He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Can you show me where it is?”

She didn’t respond, just set off past the east wing of the house, expecting him to follow. He caught up and quickly fell into step beside her, and she jerked her chin, gesturing with it towards a little thicket of trees.

“That’s where the gate is.”

“So if someone were to sneak in here, under the cover of darkness, they could stay along the treeline and then sneak up to the main house undetected?”

“Not undetected, no! We let the dogs out at night, they roam the grounds and if anyone comes near the house, they’re trained to attack.”

“What if someone was known to the dogs? Someone who’d been around them before?”

“You’re still talking about Finn, I assume?” At his nod, she tilted her head in a gesture of uncertainty. “Maybe. But it’s unlikely.”

“How unlikely?”

“Not impossible.”

“How many doors are there into the house from the east wing?”

“Two, but the dogs would see you before you reached them. Your best bet would be the windows on the east facing wall, they’re closest to here.”

He followed her finger, gaze falling on the ivy covered wall, and catalogued all the windows, noticing one in particular. “The second floor window there, that’s the hallway near Abby’s lounge?”

“Yes.”

“Is that window ever unlocked?”

“Never, I was under the impression it was sealed shut. Why?”

“Because it was open yesterday.”

She opened her mouth, a witty retort presumably at the ready, and then closed it, thinking. She looked between the gate and the second floor window, measuring the distance. “It would be hard work unlocking it from the outside, dangling from the ivy.”

“But possible?”

“Not _im_ possible.”

He slumped, scrubbing a hand through his hair. _“Great.”_

Diyoza eyed him. “So your new theory is that someone _broke in_ to poison Dante?”

“Not necessarily. At the moment my theory is just that someone has been on the grounds who wasn’t a member of the family. That doesn’t prove anything.”

He glanced at the gate again, almost entirely concealed by the gathering of trees and bushes. Even if someone could sneak in, the second they left the shadow of the trees, they’d be visible from the house. Not to mention the dogs.

But that open window was suspicious.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Bellamy spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the perimeter of the grounds, checking for any other means of entry, but it seemed Dante was vigilant in only having two ways in and out of Weathermere. He occasionally bumped into Diyoza deadheading the flowers, or Murphy defacing statues, and on his way back to the house, Charlotte called down from her treehouse, but other than that he didn’t find anything or anyone of note.

That little gate was the only hope anybody had of sneaking in, and as long as the family knew about it, it wouldn’t be too much of a problem.

So he returned to the foyer, grabbing his hat and coat from the stand by the door, and went in search of Clarke to say goodbye. When he didn’t find her, he reasoned with himself that maybe leaving without telling her was the best policy. There was no need to find her; she was just a suspect. He would see her again tomorrow morning anyway, when the police turned up, because he wasn’t going to let her go through that alone- shit. So maybe he was having trouble separating the business and personal parts of this case. He was only human.

The sun was getting low in the sky and there were streaks of pink arching out over the ominous looking mansion, and he wondered how it was possible for two such polar opposite sights to coexist.

He started driving down the lane towards the entrance, but he was barely halfway there when he noticed something moving out of the corner of his eye.

Someone was sneaking in through the side-gate.

He yanked the wheel, powering off the road and onto the green, and he knew the exact moment the person spotted him, because he saw the shadow take off down towards the lake. They weren’t going to outrun his car though.

He pushed harder on the accelerator and caught up to the runner - Finn goddamn Collins.

When he hit the brakes and skidded to a stop in front of him, the wheels chewed up a lot of dirt, sending it spraying everywhere. It covered Finn, who fell backwards in his hurry to get away from the flying specks of rock and mud. Bellamy got out of the car and towered over him.

“What the _fuck_ do you think you’re doing?”

Finn looked up at him, silhouetted in the dying light, and for a moment Bellamy thought he might pass out, but eventually he swallowed, panting, and wiped sweat from his brow, eyes wild. “I’m here on official business.”

Bellamy scoffed.

“No, you’re not. You’re not supposed to be here. You were assigned to one of the Lola Légère robberies in London. That’s a high profile case, Collins, catching her would get you promoted, maybe get you a knighthood or a free trip to Paris. And yet. You’re lying in the dirt in Dante Wallace’s garden. Why is that?”

“I came to check on Clarke.”

“That’s not your job.”

“What, so it’s _yours?”_

“Clarke is perfectly capable of taking care of herself, actually,” when Finn tried to sit up, Bellamy put his boot on his chest and kept him down, “but since you asked, _yes._ It’s _my job._ Not yours. And as the person here trying to keep Clarke safe, I’m telling you to leave, now.”

“It’s not your property; unless you’re arresting me, you can’t tell me _shit.”_

“Oh, but I can.” A familiar voice said from behind them.

Bellamy turned to find Diyoza standing there, rifle slung over her shoulder and malice in her eyes. She didn’t so much as _glance_ at Bellamy; her gaze was locked firmly on the weasel in the grass.

The weasel in question froze like a deer in headlights. “C’mon, Diyoza, I’m here to check on Clarke, that’s not a crime, is it?”

“No.” She drummed her fingers lightly against the gun. “But trespassing is.”

She lifted the gun from her shoulder and gripped it, not quite pointing it at him, but not letting it sit idle either, and took one, single, menacing step forward.

Finn started scrambling backwards.

“You leave, Mr Collins; you leave now and you don’t come back. You don’t contact Clarke - no calls, no letters, no trying to bump into her in town - you never speak to her again, you hear me? Nod if you understand.” She pointed the gun directly between his eyes. He nodded frantically. “Good. If you’re not off this property in the next two minutes, Mr Collins, I’m shooting you in the crotch. That’ll be the only warning shot. Next one’ll be in the face.”

Bellamy had never seen anyone run so fast in his life. Finn took off up the hill and scrambled back over the gate, completely disappearing into the forest and off to presumably wherever he had left his car.

“And you,” Diyoza rounded on him, “you damaged my lawn.”

He held up his hands in surrender. “Sorry.”

Her eyebrow quirked up. “You can make it up to me by staying the night. There’s no guarantee that Collins won’t come back when he thinks you’re gone.”

“Liar.” He leaned against his car door, regarding her. “Why do you really want me to stay?”

She disarmed her rifle and tucked it back against her neck.

“Clarke needs you.” She said simply. “And she won’t ask, because she loves you too much, so I am. Stay the night - you can do more investigating before the police arrive tomorrow afternoon, without having to drive in and out of London again.”

When he didn’t answer right away, she jerked her head at the mansion.

“It’s not like we don’t have the room.” She smirked, and he could feel himself giving in, an accepting smile forming in his cheeks.

“Fine. But only because I ruined your grass.”  
  
“Yeah, and you better get your car off it now, or you’re going to be the one becoming acquainted with my gun.”

“Anyone ever tell you that you’re terrifying?”

“Not nearly enough.” She flashed him a wolfish grin and half-saluted, making her way back towards the house.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Clarke showed him to a room in the east wing, right across the hallway from hers.

“You really don’t have to stay, you know.” She said, for the third time. “It’s not a big deal, really, I’ll be fine.”

“Do you _want_ me to go?”

She hesitated. “No, I just… if _you_ wanted to, I wouldn’t blame you. It’s not your job to protect me.”

“No, but it’s my job to solve this case, and if part of that means keeping you safe and knocking Collins on his ass, I’m staying here. Okay?”

“Okay.” She smiled at him, soft and nervous, like she thought he might leave if she pushed too hard. “Well, there’s an ensuite, and we can wash your clothes. And uh-”

“-Clarke? It’s fine. I’m fine.”

She let out a breath of relief. “Good. That’s good. I’ll let you get settled then.”

She closed the door behind her, leaving him alone in the enormously lavish room, trying to get his bearings in a place that felt like it was well on its way to drowning him.

He wasn’t sure how long he was left there - first sitting uncomfortably on the edge of the mattress, then standing at the window, then sitting at the desk in the corner to go over his case notes - but the sun had entirely vanished and the moon was high in the sky by the time someone knocked at his door.

Clarke was standing on the other side, in a dark blue skirt and a white blouse tucked into it, hovering expectantly.

“You coming?”

“Where to?”

“Dinner. It’s a family affair.” She said in a sing-song voice, scrunching her nose up in distaste.

“Wouldn’t miss it.” He deadpanned, and she curled her arm around his elbow and led him down the stairs and through a few doors before they reached the large dining room.

There was a rectangular, mahogany table in the centre of the room, adorned in plates of food and glasses of various kinds of alcohol.

And the entire family was sitting down for dinner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OOOOOH WHO'S READY FOR THE ABSOLUTE SHITFEST THAT IS FAMILY DINNER?
> 
> *raises hand* I KNOW I AM!! 
> 
> I hope you're enjoying it!! Any theories? Comments? Queries? Your comments make me happier than Diyoza when she's pointing a rifle at someone.


	5. this is what a nightmare is

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Family dinner is about to get a little intense...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> today's character poster is [MURPHY](https://talistheintrovert.tumblr.com/post/186410774680/chapter-5-this-is-what-a-nightmare-is-so), and you can find all the brilliant artwork lindsey did for this fic [HERE!](https://chase-the-windandtouch-the-sky.tumblr.com/post/186306001668/chase-the-windandtouch-the-sky-in-a-pitch-black)

_“I don't know. I don't know at all. And that's what's frightening the life out of me. To have no idea....”  
_ **Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None**

 _Because this is what a nightmare is. Walking around among people you know, looking in their faces. And suddenly the faces change, and it’s not someone you know any longer. It’s a stranger – a cruel stranger._ **  
**Agatha Christie – Crooked House** **

* * *

 

 

 

**_Cairo, 1943_ **

After Bellamy’s meeting with Pike, he couldn’t help but go over every conversation he’d ever had with Clarke, trying to work out why she lied, whether she was the person he thought she was, if she’d let anything slip.

For all accounts, the Clarke that Pike told him about was nothing like the Clarke he knew - ruthless, cold, withdrawn - unrecognisable when held up to the smiling, witty woman he’d met so many months ago. It just didn’t make any sense.

It really didn’t help that Pike kept finding ways to bump into him, at the bar, out on the street, even in the lobby of his building, and was trying to convince Bellamy to spy on her for him.

“No.” He said, for what felt like the hundredth time.

Pike groaned. “I’m telling you, Blake, this family is _bad news._ If you just keep an eye on her whereabouts and who she’s contacting, maybe get her to open up about her dear old grandfather-”

“Didn’t you hear me the first time?”

“Mr Blake, I know you think you’re in love with her, but she’s not the woman you think she is. You’re in love with someone who doesn’t exist.”

“Don’t talk about her like that. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Actually, I-”

“-Bellamy?” Clarke’s voice sailed through the lobby and he turned his back on Pike and started walking towards her. She reached for his hand, glancing over his shoulder. “Who’s that?”

“Nobody, just some guy who won’t leave me alone.”

She frowned. “He’s bothering you?”

He drew her close, kissing her forehead as he walked them out the front doors. “Not anymore.”

She grinned against his neck. “Sap.”

“That’s me.” He said, feigning a lightheartedness that he didn’t feel.

She hummed softly to herself, gazing up at him with love in her eyes and a smile in her cheeks, and when he looked at her, he couldn’t find a single trace of deception. So why was he uneasy?

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

**_Weathermere Mansion, Evening, 1949_ **

At the head of the table sat Diyoza; a statuesque figurehead staring the family down. To her left was an empty seat, then Abby, then Jaha, followed by Wells, then Raven, then another empty seat. The seat at the foot of the table was also vacant, which was presumably where Dante used to sit, so the other space must have been Josephine. To Diyoza’s right was an empty place, then Murphy, Diana, Cage, Shaw and Charlotte, and he noted how interesting it was that Shaw had deliberately sat between Charlotte and her parents. He wondered if it was Shaw’s decision to protect her, or if her parents really just didn’t care.

Clarke went to sit on Diyoza’s left, next to her mother, so Bellamy set himself down on the right, next to Murphy.

This was going to be an interesting evening.

The entrees started without too much fanfare, except for the occasional compliment thrown Murphy’s way for the garlic mushrooms.

It wasn’t until the second course, when everyone’s glasses were being topped up, that things started to go downhill.

“So, Mr Blake,” Abby started, almost spilling her sherry, “figured out who killed my father yet?”

The conversation ground to a halt as everyone turned to face him.

He froze, fork halfway to his mouth. “Even if I did know, I probably wouldn’t tell you over dinner, would I?”

“So that’s a no, then?” She sipped her drink, eyes narrowing at him over her glass.

Cage scoffed. “What kind of a PI are you, if you can’t figure out what’s right in front of your face?”

And, naturally, that was when Josephine turned up, taking her place next to Raven and starting her food like nothing was wrong. Cage was glaring daggers at her and the rest of the table seemed to be holding its breath, but she just popped a cherry tomato in her mouth and smiled over at them. “Sorry I’m late, I lost track of time.”

“You can’t even _pretend_ to be upset he’s dead?” Cage’s face contorted in fury.

She glared. “I _am_ upset he’s dead. But none of the rest of you act like you care, so why should I? Would you rather I cried on your shoulder, Cage? Or are you just upset because your dear old dad got to see me naked? Jealous much?”

Cage exploded, already out of his chair and looking like he was going to leap at her, “How _dare-”_

Diana slammed her cutlery down.

“Sit _down,_ you idiot!” She snapped. “Everyone knows you want to sleep with her, the least you could do is have a little dignity about it.”

Josephine’s eyes widened, but Diana didn’t even look at her, just picked up her fork and started eating again. When Cage realised his display of anger was only making him look worse, he deflated and returned to his seat. He stabbed at his steak petulantly.

For the next few minutes, dinner continued in uncomfortable silence. No-one seemed to have the nerve to say anything, just ate and drank and avoided eye contact with each other.

Glasses clinked against the table, knives scraped against the plates, but other than that, silence prevailed.

Until-

“So, Bellamy, how did you meet Clarke?” Murphy asked, leaning back in his chair like the cat who got the cream.

Bellamy glanced across the table at the woman in question, who was glaring daggers at her cousin. He took his time before answering, chewing his mouthful, swallowing it, taking a drink.

“At a bar, in Cairo. Some guy was bothering her, so I intervened.”

“Intervened?” Diyoza asked lightly, eyes twinkling.

In that moment, he hated them all. “Beat the shit out of him.”

“Oh I bet Clarke _loved_ that,” Murphy said sarcastically. “A big strong man jumping to her aid. It’s her ultimate fantasy.”

“Yeah, she found me the next night to yell at me for it. Made sure to tell me she could take care of herself and maybe I should mind my own business, and I…” He shrugged. “I fell in love with her on the spot.”

Clarke’s head jerked up, eyes locked on him.

“So I offered to buy her a drink, and for some reason, she accepted.”

Diyoza glanced between them. Clarke was openly staring, Bellamy was looking anywhere but at her, and Murphy was wearing a shit-eating grin and sipping champagne like it was a day at the races.

“How long were you…?” Wells trailed off politely.

“Seven months.” Bellamy reached for his whiskey.

Murphy whistled lowly. “Only seven? I figured it would be longer, considering how much of a mess Clarke was when she got back-”

“-what’s for dessert?” She interrupted loudly, staring him down.

He huffed, disappointed, but got to his feet and disappeared into the kitchen to get the dessert anyway, which left another awkward vacuum of silence in his wake. It was Bellamy’s turn to stare at Clarke and for her to avoid his gaze, and he couldn’t help but wonder what exactly Murphy had meant by ‘mess’.

Dessert turned out to be slices of lemon meringue pie with ice-cream dolloped on the side, and Bellamy hated to admit it, but it was delicious. Actually, everything had been wonderful; Murphy really was a fantastic cook.

Josephine finished hers off first, and pushed the plate away daintily. “That was perfect, John.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Why not? What are you gonna do, poison me?” She asked, teasing. “You could, you know. You have access to everyone’s food, and I’m sure you’ve got rat poison in the kitchen somewhere. Honestly, I’m a little surprised you didn’t try it sooner.”

“Who says I didn’t?” He flashed his teeth at her. Josephine grinned back, unintimidated.

“You can talk - you poisoned your husband.” Cage hissed.

“No, I didn’t.” She said haughtily. “And even if I _had_ done it, I wouldn’t have done it that way.”

“No?”

“No.” She raised an eyebrow. “Who’s to say you didn’t do it? We all know you were angry at him for scolding you, angry at him for marrying me, angry at him for not letting you take over the business - killing him would have made you feel better.”

“No, if Cage was gonna kill him, he’d just stab him to death,” Murphy waved a hand. “Poison isn’t really his style.”

“It is yours though, isn’t it?” Diana asked him.

He rolled his eyes. “Oh, nice thing to ask your son.”

“Adopted son.”

“Fuck you too, Diana.”

“You could have poisoned him,” Jaha said to her. “To stop Cage from doing something stupid like murdering Dante in broad daylight, you would poison him first.”

“Yet I didn’t.”

“Didn’t you? What’s your alibi then?”

“I was with Cage.”

Abby laughed. “Excellent! You were with your husband, who was also conveniently not murdering his father, is that it?”

“Who’s to say you didn’t do it, huh?” Cage snapped at his sister. “You hated him as much as the rest of us. And you had enough medical knowledge to know how to do it.”

“To know that you shouldn’t inject eyedrops into your bloodstream? I don’t think you need to be a doctor for that, you just need common sense.” She retorted.

“In that case, Jaha could have done it.” Murphy said, not really accusing anyone anymore, just fanning the flames. Something thunked and he jerked back, wincing - Clarke had kicked him until the table. Bellamy hid a smile behind his glass.

“I did no such thing.”

“I think I’m going to take Charlotte to bed now,” Shaw said quietly. Her own parents seemed to have forgotten she was there, but the girl herself was watching, enraptured as her family tore each other apart.

“I’m not tired.”

“Neither am I, but I think dessert is over.”

“But no-one has asked any of the real questions yet!”

_“Bed.”_

“But-”

“No buts, c’mon.” He pulled her chair out for her and started ushering her away from the table.

Josephine stood with them. “I think I’ll go to bed as well. I’m clearly not wanted here. Charlotte didn’t you lose one of your pens this morning? I’ll help you look for it.”

Cage only made what could roughly be described as a snarling noise in her direction, and she tossed her hair over her shoulder and followed the child and her tutor from the room. Cage watched her go until the door shut behind her with a quiet snick. “Bet she was sleeping with _him_ on the side too.”

Raven bristled but before she could say anything, Jaha cut in.

“Seeing as dinner seems to be over, I think I’ll make an announcement.”

“Something cheerful, please.” Wells begged.

“I’m divorcing Abby.”

Wells smacked his palm into his own face so hard it echoed. “Jesus Christ, Dad.”

To her credit, Abby didn’t look very surprised. She didn’t speak, just reached for another bottle of sherry and slopped some into her already half-full glass. Jaha pulled a pipe from his pocket and made a show of lighting it, staring around the table at each and every person as if waiting for them to object. When none of them did, he settled back in his chair, blowing an obnoxious plume of smoke into the center of the room.

Diyoza clapped her hands together. “Aaaand time. That’s officially the most dramatic dinner we’ve had since Dante died, congratulations everyone. It really was a team effort. I hope you were entertained Mr Blake.”

Bellamy snorted into his drink.

“I’m sorry.” Clarke said quietly. “There’s a reason I didn’t want you to meet my family, Bellamy.”

He pushed his chair back and walked around the table. As he passed her, he squeezed her hand and bent down to murmur, “You are not your family, Clarke.”

Before he took his hand back, she caught it and held it tightly for another moment, her eyes squeezed shut as she leaned into him slightly. When she let him go, he almost didn’t want to leave, but then he caught Murphy’s eye over her shoulder and that was reason enough to go.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

He was almost at the door to his room - so close to safety - when Josephine stepped into his path, placing her both of her hands quite deliberately on his chest.

He blinked down at them, confused. “Uh?”

“This whole family’s out to get me, you know that?” She slid her palms up, closer to his shoulders. “You can see that now, right?”

“Mrs Wallace-”

“-I told you already, call me Josephine. Or Josie, if you want.”

“Josephine, if you think they’re out to get you, why are you staying here?”

“There’s no will. I own this place. They’re all living on _my_ property, not the other way around.”

“It’s not your property yet though, is it?” He pointed out.

She pouted. “Close enough. When the deeds get handed over I can kick them all out and then I’ll have this big old place to myself. I might just live here all on my own, or maybe I’ll just bulldoze the entire place and build my _own_ château, with an entire wing just full of jewel-encrusted pianos.”

He tried not to let his distaste show on his face.

“I’m glad you’re here.” She said, leaning in. “You can protect me from them.”

“Mrs Wa- Josephine, I suggest you get a lawyer. I’m not here to protect anyone, I’m here to solve a murder. The best thing you can do for yourself is to get a lawyer and try not to do anything to provoke the family.”

When he tried to take a step back, she somehow managed to manoeuvre him against the wall, fingers sliding down his sides and catching seductively on his belt.

“What counts as provocative, really?” She asked faux-innocently, pressing closer to him, and he extricated himself from her grip, holding her at arms-length even and she continued to reach for him.

“I think it’s best if you go to your own room now, Mrs Wallace.”

“Oh come on, _I think-”_

“-didn’t you hear him?” A voice said coldly. They both looked over to find Clarke leaning against the wall, arms folded. She was completely still, gaze locked on where Josephine’s hand was still gripping the fabric of his tie.

“Sorry, were we in your way?” Josephine said, smiling. “We can take it to the bedroom if you like.”

Clarke’s expression hardened. “Don’t you have a piano to assault?”

“No, actually-”

 _“-LEAVE, Josephine.”_   She snapped, taking a single step forward. For the first time, Bellamy could actually see the ruthlessness that the Wallaces were known for; there was anger in her stance and murder in her gaze, and it almost frightened him. Almost. Josephine’s eyes widened and she dropped Bellamy’s tie, darting away down the corridor without so much as a glance back in their direction. When they were alone, Clarke relaxed slightly, but there was still a stiffness to her spine and a wariness in her eyes that Bellamy wanted to wipe away.

He stretched out a hand but she sidestepped it.

“You okay?” He asked.

“Fine.” She said, detached, striding past him and slamming her door closed behind her.

That probably could have gone better.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Bellamy _had_ hoped to get a good night’s sleep and then wake up in the morning with fresh eyes, ready to make headway in the investigation, and maybe, if he was lucky, to solve it.

He didn’t expect to be woken by frantic knocking on his door and the sounds of hurried feet moving up and down the corridor outside. He stumbled to the door, opening it to Clarke’s worried face. He blinked blearily. “What’s wrong?”

“Have you seen Charlotte?”

He shook his head. “Why?”

Her face crumpled and she slumped forward, burying her face in his shoulder. When she spoke, it was muffled. “She’s gone missing.”

“What do you mean _missing?!”_   He asked, suddenly wide awake.

“I mean,” she leaned back, wiping her cheeks, “that no-one’s seen her since last night. She didn’t come to breakfast, and when Diyoza went to her room to check on her, she hadn’t slept in her bed. She checked the treehouse, but when she wasn’t there either, we all started looking for her. We’ve checked every room in the house, she isn’t anywhere, Bellamy, she’s gone, she’s gone and someone took her, and oh god, what if she’s _dead_ or-”

“-okay, _whoa,_ hey, breathe.” He cupped her cheek in his palm. “We’ll find her, okay?”

She sniffled, turning her head so she was closer to him, nuzzling into his hand. “What if something’s happened to her?”

He didn’t have an answer for that. “I’m going to get dressed, okay? And then I’ll help you look. The police are arriving at eleven, it’s ten now, so we’ll tell them about it when they get here, okay? We’ll figure something out.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

However, when he moved back into his room, she followed. He was about to bring it up, but she looked so lost, sitting on the edge of his mattress and pulling at her sleeves anxiously, that he decided to just let it go. He got changed in the bathroom and when he emerged, it seemed like she’d pulled herself together a little.

He wondered idly if he was the only person she allowed herself to be that vulnerable with, right before he stamped that thought out and turned his focus to the missing girl.

For the remainder of the hour, he helped them search the house again, making doubly and triply sure that Charlotte wasn’t just playing a game and hiding from them all.

Marcus and the uniforms arrived right on time and Shaw and Abby immediately rushed out to tell them what had happened, which resulted in the _police_ searching the house and still turning up empty. At that point, they had to reconcile the fact that Charlotte really was gone without a trace, and that anyone could have taken her.

Marcus interviewed everyone about their whereabouts, and the only people who jumped out as suspicious were Shaw and Josephine - both of whom had walked Charlotte to her bedroom before retiring to bed themselves.

Bellamy was sitting in the library where he’d visited them during her lesson the day before, trying to think of possible scenarios, when Marcus sat down next to him.

“What do you think happened?”

Bellamy sighed. “Charlotte was always sneaking around, spying on everyone and writing down everything in her notebook. If someone caught her prying where she shouldn’t, if she uncovered something sinister…”

“You think the person who murdered Dante did this?” Kane finished for him.

“It’s definitely a strong possibility.”

“What are the others?”

“Someone snuck in and kidnapped her.” He pointed out the window, towards the east wall of the field, where he could still see the dirt tire tracks he left yesterday. “There’s a gate over there. It’s where I caught Finn Collins yesterday, trying to sneak in and see Clarke.”

Kane rubbed his beard. “He’s been suspended for that. I’ve got another officer watching his house, to make sure he doesn’t turn up here again.”

“I doubt he will. Diyoza put the fear of god in him - almost scared _me.”_

“She a suspect then?”

“They all are.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Except Wells. And Shaw and Raven both hid that they were with each other, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t do it.”

Kane sat back in his chair, staring out the window pensively. “Who do you think did it?”

“At the moment? My money is on Cage or Josephine. Cage keeps trying to pin it on her, which is suspicious in itself. Or maybe his wife did it and he’s trying to take the heat off her.”

“And why Josephine?”

“She’s only been a widow a week and she’s already trying to move on.” At Marcus’s raised eyebrow, he winced. “She tried to seduce me last night.”

“I’m sure Clarke loved that.” Kane muttered.

Bellamy pressed his lips together, thinking. “The last time Charlotte was seen by everyone was at dinner. Shaw and Josephine were the last people seen with her. If she let slip to one of them that she _knew_ something…”

“One of them could have had a very good reason to take her out of the equation, if they didn’t want her to tell anyone else.” Kane shook his head. “I’ve got to arrest them. They’re the only suspects we’ve got; even if they didn’t do it, we might be able to flush out the person who did.”

The next thing Bellamy knew, Shaw and Josephine were being handcuffed in front of the entire family and led towards a waiting police car. The phone was ringing somewhere in the house, and Jaha, who had no inclination to watch the display, went off to answer it, but everyone else was enraptured by the arrests. Bellamy tried to stay somewhere near the back, observing the family’s individual reactions.

Josephine saw him and tried to walk his way, but was quickly shoved back to the path. She called out to him as they opened the car door and helped her inside. “Do you see it now?! Bellamy, they’re all out to get me! All of them! Bellamy you have to help me!”

The car doors shut and then it disappeared up the lane, both Shaw and Josephine’s faces visible staring back at them out the back window. Shaw hadn’t said a word.

“That’s it then!” Cage grinned viciously. “It’s over. We caught the bitch, and her accomplice. No more looking over our shoulders or having _dandies_  and low-class scum invading our home.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Jaha emerged, a slip of paper in his hand, “things aren’t even close to finished.”

“What are you talking about?”

“That was the solicitors on the phone. Turns out that Dante _did_ have a will after all. Had it being held by a friend, to be sent forward a week after his death. It turned up at the offices this morning.”

“And? Who’s getting what?” Abby asked.

Jaha pulled his pipe from his pocket and stuck it between his teeth - not lighting it, just letting it sit there, using the motion to comfort himself. He sighed. “Clarke.”

“What about me?” Clarke said, at the same time as her mother said,

“Clarke’s getting what?”

Jaha waved the piece of paper, a telegram that had come through from the solicitor’s office. “Everything. Dante left Clarke _everything.”_

And for the second time that morning, the house erupted into chaos.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Hours later, when four separate police officers had to step in to calm Cage Wallace down and stop him from throttling his niece right there in the front garden, and she’d finished being yelled at by nearly all of her relatives, Bellamy found Clarke hiding in the back of the library.

She was curled up in an armchair, reading through the will with the light from the window, and frowning slightly at it as her eyes scanned down the page.

He sat down on the stool next to her.

“Did you know?” He asked, careful.

She rubbed her eyebrow, stress showing through. “I suspected. But I didn’t… I didn’t know it would be _everything.”_

“But you knew you were getting more than everyone else?”

She nodded, jumping to her feet and pacing up and down in front of him, trying to get her thoughts in order. “That’s what Dante was telling me the night he was poisoned, it’s why I was in his room. He wanted me to know he was leaving his business to me. I told him I didn’t want it, that I didn’t want any part of it, but he was insistent. He didn’t trust Cage with it, and he knew Abby wouldn’t be any good, so it fell to me. I was his favourite, he said. But I thought he just meant the business, I didn’t know he meant the house, the cars, the money- I promise, Bell, I didn’t know.”

“But you know how suspicious this looks?”

“Of course I do.” She clutched at the will like it was the only thing tethering her to Earth. “But I didn’t want it. It was in my best interests to keep him alive. I _don’t want it,_ Bellamy.”

“I know.” He whispered. He stood, reaching for her hand. “I’ll find out who did this, Clarke.”

“Even if it’s me?” She met his eyes with a kind of icy determination he wasn’t expecting.

“Was it you?”

Anger flared in those blue eyes he knew so well. “How can you ask me that?”

“Clarke, you know I have to.”

“No, you don’t.” She spun on her heel and moved to storm away through the shelves, but he caught her wrist, holding her there and earning another scathing glare.

He stepped closer, pleading. “Be reasonable.”

“You really think I could do this? To Dante? To _Charlotte?_ Just for some money?” The pure _hurt_ in her voice was so much worse than the anger, and he tried not to let it affect him, but she just looked so _lost_ and _betrayed_ that his heart ached.

He released her, but this time she didn’t go anywhere, just standing there despondently.

He threw up his hands, pacing, “Clarke everyone in this house could be a killer, everyone in the world could be. I could be. We all have the potential. All I know about this case is that someone _did_ kill your grandfather, and kidnap Charlotte, and I don’t believe it was Shaw, or Josephine. Which means that person is still in this house.”

“But do you think it was me?” She asked, quieter than before.

He groaned and scrubbed his hands down his face. “Clarke, I can’t discount you as a suspect just because I’m in love with you! I’ve got to be better than that, for the sake of solving this goddamn case.”

“What?”

“I’m not ruling you out until I have proof, Clarke.”

“No, not that.”

“What, then?”

She moved towards him, slowly, tentatively. “You said, _you can’t discount me as a suspect...”_

“Yes.”

_“...just because you’re in love with me.”_

Ah.

He swallowed.

Took a step back.  
  
She took a breath. “You’re still in love with me? After all this time?”

He yanked at the knot of his tie, loosening it.

“You can’t tell me you didn’t know, Clarke. I came when you called. You didn’t even have to ask _nicely_. I dropped all my open cases on Monty and drove out here to this frustratingly enormous house in this expensive countryside property that’s all funded by Dante’s dirty money, and I interrogated your family and aired secrets I had no interest in knowing, all for the sake of solving the murder of a man that, for all accounts, wasn’t worth the two days I’ve spent on him. You _had_ to know.”

She was shaking her head and there were tears creeping into the corners of her eyes. “I didn’t. I really didn’t, I-”

And then somehow her back was against one of the bookshelves and he was boxing her in, only stopping her from leaving with his arms propped up either side of her head.

This was a bad idea.

This was _beyond_ bad, but he didn’t care anymore.

The woman he hadn’t been able to stop loving for the last seven years was looking up at him with wonder in her eyes and he couldn’t tear himself away if he tried.

“You love me.” She whispered.

He let his head fall until their foreheads were pressed together, and she sighed, like she used to in Cairo, like touching him was the only thing that reminded her to breathe.

“Against my better judgement, yeah.” He admitted, voice low.

Her fingers slid up his arms until they were playing with the collar of his shirt. “I never stopped loving you, Bellamy, not ever. I tried.”

“Why?” He asked; the question that had been preying on his mind for six years finally escaped his lips. “If you loved me, why did you leave? Why did you lie?”

“You were spying on me, Bellamy, it’s hard to come back from that!”

“No.” He growled. “I never spied on you, _you_ know that. I told you that the OSS was spying on you, that they wanted me to do the same, and _you_ told me to take the job. _You_ told me to sell you out to them. And even after you left, I _never did.”_

“Bellamy.”

He pushed off the shelves, stepping backwards. “I never betrayed you, Clarke. I refused to use you to get to Wallace, I turned the OSS job down, and you _still left me!_ I would have stayed! I would have done _anything_ for you!”

“And that’s exactly the problem!” She cried out. “You would have _stayed!_ Despite everything, despite the lies, despite who I was and who my family were and everything I was born into, you would have stayed, because you loved me. And I loved you too much to let you do that!”

He faltered. “What?”

“I told you, Bellamy, my family is _poison._ We taint everything we touch, and you were just… you were too _good,_ Bellamy. I couldn’t let you become a part of that, a part of _this.”_ She waved her hand around at their surroundings. “Look at it! Look at what this family has done, what this place has done. One of them murdered my grandfather, for money or power or maybe just out of _spite -_ we’re _crooked._ Everything here is broken. I never wanted to bring you into this, because it would have corrupted you too, or you would have realised that I was just as bad as them and left me anyway. I couldn’t deal with that. So I left.”

Bellamy felt the last six years of resentment slipping from his grasp, replaced with something else, something he couldn't quite name.

"I-"

But he never got a chance to finish that sentence, because somewhere in the house, someone screamed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What are you thinking? 
> 
> Who do you think did it? Who screamed? What happened to Charlotte? ALL THIS AND MORE, NEXT TIME ON GLEE! 
> 
> Your comments make me happier than Murphy in the kitchen and I hope you're enjoying it!! Only two chapters to go!


	6. the evils that man does of his own free will

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THE KILLER STRIKES AGAIN and the fallout is... interesting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> today's character poster is [JOSEPHINE](https://talistheintrovert.tumblr.com/post/186632772875/chapter-6-the-evils-that-man-does-of-his-own-free), and you can find all the brilliant artwork lindsey did for this fic [HERE!](https://chase-the-windandtouch-the-sky.tumblr.com/post/186306001668/chase-the-windandtouch-the-sky-in-a-pitch-black)
> 
> If you want a warning as to who gets killed before I *immediately* reveal it in the chapter, feel free to click the "more notes" link below for the chapter warnings, but like... don't spoil it for yourself if you don't have to! Mysteries are fun! Except the mystery of when becho will break up in canon... that mystery is pretty s t r e s s f u l.
> 
> BUCKLE IN FOLKS, THIS ONE'S A DOOZY.

_“Never tell all you know—not even to the person you know best.”_  
**Agatha Christie, The Secret Adversary**

 _“There is too much tendency to attribute to God the evils that man does of his own free will._  
_I must concede you the Devil. God doesn't really need to punish us, Miss Barton. We're so busy punishing ourselves.”_  
**Agatha Christie, The Moving Finger**

* * *

 

 

 

 

_**Cairo, 1943** _

It was his own fault really.

He’d left Pike’s letter on the desk.

Maybe he _wanted_ to get caught. Maybe his subconscious had wanted Clarke to find evidence of the OSS on her tail, to warn her or to unburden him from keeping secrets, but either way, she knew now, and she was _furious_.

She brandished the paper at him, still in the navy dress she was wearing at dinner, eyes flashing dangerously. “What the hell is this?”

“It’s a letter from an OSS agent who’s been tailing you.”

“I can see that.” She glared. “Why the hell do you have it?”

“Because he approached me. He wanted me to spy on you.”

“Why?”

“Because…” He paused, taking a deep breath. When he spoke again, it was calm, level, and he stepped forward carefully. “You _know_ why, Clarke.”

Fear flickered across her face. “Bellamy-”

“-who are you, really, Clarke?”

“Exactly who I said I was.” She whispered. “I promise.”

“But that’s not quite true, is it?”

She drew herself up to her full height. “I am _not_ my family, Bellamy. I told you, I came here, in the middle of the war, to get _away_ from my family. My grandfather, he’s… controlling, and I needed space from that, from all of them.”

“Your grandfather,” Bellamy scoffed, “renowned crime boss, Dante Wallace, that grandfather?”

“I don’t approve of our family’s business, but I can’t exactly stop it from happening! All I can do is distance myself from it, which is what I was _trying to do._ And then I met you, and…”

“And?”

There were tears in her eyes, pooling against her lashes, and she was scrunching the letter in her hand, anger and panic and distress making her like a coil - wound up and ready to snap.

“And meeting you made me feel like it didn’t _matter_ what my family legacy was. You fell in love with _me,_ and I loved you so much for that.” She sniffled. “And then I come in here, and it turns out that you’ve been spying on me the whole time.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I didn’t, I wouldn’t Clarke, not ever. Pike has been trying to make me, and I keep saying no.”

“He offered you a job, Bellamy,” she waved the letter at him for emphasis. “If you spy on me, tell him what you know, you get a job in the OSS. That’s your dream job, and you’re telling me you haven’t accepted his offer yet?”

“No, I haven’t, and I’m not going to!” He snapped.

“God, why _not?!”_

He faltered. “What?”

“C’mon, Bellamy, it’s your _dream job._ Why wouldn’t you take it?”

“Are- are you… Because _I love you,_ Clarke. I’m not going to betray you just for some job! You’re _it_ for me Clarke, I would do anything for you! I’m not giving this up, not for anything.”

She tossed the letter to the side and walked towards the balcony, getting her breathing under control. He let her go, not wanting to get in her space and make it worse, and when she spoke, it was a lot calmer, but it was also cold, detached.

“You should.”

“Clarke, I told you, I’m not-”

“You should take the job, Bellamy.”

“You cannot be serious.”

“I am.” She turned around, all steel and hard edges. “Because this? This is done.”

It would have hurt less if she’d slapped him in the face.

“Clarke-”

“How long have you known?”

He swallowed. “A little over a month.”

“So I lied to you about who I was, and then you found out and lied to me; pretended not to know? Does that scream of normal behaviour to you?” When he didn’t speak, she set her jaw. “Didn’t think so. We can’t continue like this.”

“We’re not. Now it’s out there, we both know, we can move past this.”

“No. No, I don’t think we can.”

“Aren’t you hearing me? I don’t care about any of this! Your family could be the Russian royal family or part of the enemy regime and I wouldn’t care, because I’m not in love with _them._ You can’t just walk away from this, Clarke, not now.”

“They are.”

“Are what?”

Something like guilt took residence around her shoulders, and she looked away, eyes locked somewhere near his shoulder. “Helping the enemy. Dante sells weapons to both sides, Bellamy. Sells intel to both sides. He’s profiting from this war, profiting from the deaths of all these innocent people. You’re telling me you’re okay with that?”

“No, but-”

She grabbed her clutch from the bed where she’d dropped it. “Well that’s who my family is. And that’s who I am. You don’t know me, Bellamy, but you hate everything my family stands for, and you can’t be in love with something you hate.”

“Clarke-” He tried one last time, but she the look she shot him was full of disdain, and her hand was already on the doorknob.

“We’re done. Stay away from me.”

When the door slammed behind her, it felt like she’d taken his whole world with her.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

**_Weathermere Mansion, Midday, 1949_ **

Clarke sprinted down the corridor and he was right on her heels, searching for the source of the scream. It didn’t take long.

Raven was in a heap against the bannisters of the landing, blood on her hands and panic in her eyes.

“Raven? What’s going on, what happened?” Clarke asked as they approached.

Immediately, the other woman was on her feet, glancing between them, her hands outstretched and shaky. “Oh, no, Clarke, no, you can’t go in there. Bellamy, you can’t let her in there, okay?”

Bellamy turned his head to the open door, Dante’s study, and caught a glimpse of mousy hair lying next to an open safe.

There was red on the floor.

What-” Clarke asked, following his gaze, but he quickly grabbed her and dragged her back.

“No, no, she’s right, you need to stay here.” He said, stepping in front of her and holding an arm out. “Someone needs to ring for the police.”

“Jaha’s already doing it.” Raven muttered. “He found, the, uh… the body.”

“Why, who is it? What’s going on?!” Clarke cried out, trying to push past him. Bellamy held his ground, reaching up to cup her face in his hands.

“Clarke, I need you to stay out here. If you come in with me, it’s too suspicious, and you’re already a suspect. Okay?”

That seemed to get through to her. She nodded slightly and stopped fighting him. He pressed a kiss to her forehead before he stepped away, and Raven grabbed her hand, offering reassurance while he went to examine the crime scene.

He observed Dante’s office carefully, making sure not to touch anything that might be considered evidence, and walked around the desk.

He crouched down next to Abby Jaha’s body.

Her eyes were open, glassy, and there was a glass of champagne dangling half-out of her fingers, most of it spilled on the expensive carpet, mingling with the blood.

Her throat was cut.

There was a muffled cry from outside the door, and he could hear Clarke yelling something, followed by Raven’s raised voice, and then there were more footsteps on the landing, and hushed voices all talking over each other.

The safe was empty - whatever Abby had been looking for was long gone, or maybe it had never been there in the first place. He wondered if that was what she’d been killed for, or if it was something else.

There was the faint aroma of a familiar perfume, but stronger than that was the distinctive smell of bitter almonds, and he tilted his head, seeking it out. As he swayed closer, he realised the smell was coming from the champagne glass.

Someone had poisoned her drink.

But if they’d gone to all the trouble to poison her, why slit her throat?

His train of thought was derailed when someone knocked on the half-open door. Jaha was standing there nervously, pointedly not looking towards the body.

“The police are on their way. They told me you were the only person allowed in the room and to keep everyone else in another part of the house, so we’re going downstairs, into one of the sunrooms.”

“Okay.” He stood up. “You found her?”

“Yeah. I thought I heard noise in here, but no-one’s been in since he died, so I opened the door, and I… she was already…” He inhaled shakily. “She was still breathing, so I called out for help and Raven was down the hall, so she ran in, put pressure on the wound, but… it was too late.”

“Raven was the one who screamed?”

“She saw me standing over the body and assumed- until I begged her to help me save her.”

“I’m sorry, but I have to ask - did you kill your wife?”

He clenched his fists by his sides, but it didn’t appear as if he wanted to swing them. “No I did not. I didn’t _like_ my wife, Mr Blake, but I loved her once. And I didn’t want her dead.”

“You were divorcing her.” Bellamy pointed out.

“Exactly, I was getting what I wanted, why would I do _this?”_   He gestured towards the body, looking faintly ill.

“If she tried to fight the divorce…” He trailed off, but Jaha knew what he meant.

He shook his head vehemently, still looking towards the fireplace instead of the desk. “She didn’t. Even if she had, I wouldn’t kill her - she’s the mother of my child, I couldn’t do that to him, or Clarke.”

Bellamy observed him, and against his better judgement, he found himself believing the man - Jaha was ruthless, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew better than to murder his wife while there was still police attention on the house, right after he announced his divorce.

“Did you see anything else when you first came in?”

“I, I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention; I came in expecting to find someone rummaging through his things, and then I see my wife on the floor, and the _blood-”_

“-okay, Jaha, I don’t think I need anything else, you can go downstairs with the others now. Just make sure nobody leaves the house until the police arrive, okay?”

At that, Thelonius winced.

Bellamy raised an eyebrow. “What is it?”

“Diyoza isn’t here.”

“What do you mean, _she isn’t here?”_

“She left, about an hour ago, for some kind of appointment in town.”

Bellamy suppressed a groan. “Okay, let me know when she gets back.”

Jaha nodded and spun from the room, couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Bellamy rocked back on his heels a bit, surveying the room again. There was something off about his surroundings that was bothering him. He let his eyes rake over every surface, trailing over the desk, the empty safe, the bookshelves, the walls-

The bookshelves. There were plenty of books, but there were spaces, obvious spaces, in parts of the shelf that didn’t make sense. He got to his feet and walked over. Immediately, he noticed the outline of dust where there had been bookends propping up Dante’s notes and logs. There didn’t appear to be any actual books missing, just the bookends. There was one or two still there, and he observed them; they looked expensive, heavy, and he had no idea why any single one of them - let alone multiple - would be missing.

Strange.

Admittedly not as strange as a dead body beside an empty safe, but still, it was odd.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

When he left the office and closed the door behind him, locking it with the key Jaha had left outside and pocketing it, he leaned heavily on the bannister, looking down at the foyer below while he mulled things over.

He was just about to head down and interrogate everyone when Diyoza arrived. She slipped in quietly, making a point to catch the door before it swung shut, creeping into the house and glancing around. Her eyes flicked up and when she saw him standing there, she straightened up and tilted her head at him.

“What’s wrong?”

“Abby’s dead.”

The colour drained from her face. _“Fuck.”_

“Colourful language, for a lady.” He remarked, semi-teasing.

“Fuck.” She said again, for emphasis. “Is Clarke alright?”

“I don’t know, I’ve been in with the body for the last half hour. The rest of the family is in one of the sunrooms. I was heading there now, to interview everyone.”

She nodded, looking at him expectantly, which he took as a cue to descend the stairs and follow her towards the room in question.

“Where were you?”

She shrugged, forced nonchalance coupled with genuine distrust. “I had an appointment.”

“What kind of appointment?” He asked pointedly.

Diyoza sighed, stopping just before they reached the door. She folded her arms. “I was speaking to my solicitor.”

“About?”

“My will.”

“Your… will?”

“Yes. I didn’t have one, now I do.”

He blinked, taken aback. “I’m sorry, you left the house, in the middle of a murder investigation, when a child is still missing, to go write a will?”

“What can I say, being suddenly confronted with mortality makes me think about things like that.” She quirked an eyebrow, daring him to argue with her, but he held up his hands in surrender and she turned and opened the door.

The family were huddled on seats around the unlit fireplace. Clarke looked a little gaunt, but seemed to be holding it together, there were tear-tracks on Raven’s cheeks, and Wells was sitting on the floor with his head bowed, but no-one else seemed to be particularly upset. Jaha was standing stoically off to the side, Cage and Diana just looked _bored,_ and Murphy looked annoyed more than anything else. Diyoza went and sat on Clarke’s other side, reaching down to grip Wells’ shoulder comfortingly.

“What happened?” Clarke asked, voice shaky.

“You know I can’t tell you that, not until I’ve asked you all a few questions.” He said, as gently as he could. She nodded, gaze a little distracted, and he sat down across from them all. “Can you all account for your whereabouts over the last three hours?”

“I was on the telephone.” Jaha offered first. “In my office, for a while. And then I was going through papers for the business. I didn’t leave the room except when I went upstairs. I was heading for my study in the east wing, but I thought I heard something when I walked past Dante’s office, so I…”

Bellamy nodded, not needing him to go on.

“I was with you.” Clarke whispered.

“That wasn’t for long.” He pointed out. “Where were you before I found you?”

“In the library. I was hiding out, trying to avoid everyone. Trying to avoid _her.”_ She buried her face in her hands, trying to keep it together. When she lifted her head again, she sniffled, but there were no new tears in her eyes. “I didn’t leave the library until we heard Raven scream.”

“I was angry, looking for evidence that Shaw didn’t do anything wrong.” Raven chimed in. “I’d been in his room, looking through his things, and I was on my way towards Charlotte’s room, to see if I could find anything to exonerate him, when I heard Jaha call for help.”

Wells clenched his jaw, swallowing heavily. “I was reading, in my room. At one point I left to walk down the lane and post a letter in the letterbox, but when I returned, I had barely been back in my room ten minutes before I heard the scream, and then my father knocked on my door and brought me down here with everyone else.”

“What book?”

“The Picture of Dorian Gray.” He said, still not looking up. “My… my friend recommended it to me, the letter was for him, to tell him what I thought of it.”

Bellamy nodded, scribbling it down. He looked over at Cage and Diana expectantly, but Murphy was the person who spoke up. “I was in Dante’s room.”

Everyone’s heads whipped round to face him.

 _“What?!”_ Clarke asked, sharp.

He shrugged. “I was looking for something. I looked for it in his office yesterday, but the safe was empty. I figured I was too late and someone had already taken everything, but I realised that Dante isn’t the kind of person to put things where you think he’ll put them. So I went looking through his room, to see if there was another secret safe or something.”

“And? Was there?” Diana asked, suddenly taking an interest in the conversation.

“Naturally.” Murphy drawled. “Unfortunately, it was empty too, so either someone emptied it or there was never anything in there and he hides his secrets elsewhere. Even odds, with Dante.”

Diana leaned back in her chair, bored again, but Diyoza was frowning in thought. “What were you looking for?”

Murphy scoffed. “Like I’d tell anyone in this family anything.”

“I resent that.” Wells muttered, joking despite the tense set of his shoulders.

Bellamy turned his attention to the two most suspicious people in the room. “And you two, where were you?”

“Three hours ago? I believe Cage was still angry over the new will, and was looking for someone to take it out on.” Diana said casually.

“And did you find someone to take it out on?” Bellamy asked.

Cage glared. “No. I _was_ intending to drive into London tonight and discipline the members of our organisation who dared step out of line, maybe chase down some debts, but I didn’t get halfway towards the car before Jaha called me inside.”

“Diana?”

“I was in my office, trying to work out a way to take control of the business.” She admitted freely, not appearing to care in the slightest that she would be stealing part of her niece’s inheritance by doing so. Clarke didn’t look altogether surprised, and neither did anyone else, but Wells and Murphy both looked disgusted on her behalf.

“That’s sweet of you, Diana.” Murphy injected about as much venom into his voice as was possible while still maintaining a sarcastic smile. “It’s nice to know that the reason you weren’t murdering Clarke’s mom is that you were busy trying to take what’s rightfully hers.”

She didn’t respond, just inclined her head in some vague form of acknowledgement, and Bellamy found himself feeling genuinely furious for Clarke, for the family she was saddled with, for the twisted web of lies and hatred they all lived in together.

He sat back, pensive, and his eyes caught on something.

“Can we go now?” Cage spat, already on his feet.

Bellamy sighed. “Yes, you can, but you can’t leave the house until the police arrive so they can question you as well.”

“We have flights booked to Italy in the morning.” Diana said. “And if we’re not on them, I’m billing you personally for the expense, Mr Blake.”

“Mrs Wallace, your daughter is _still missing.”_   He pointed out, incredulous.

“And I’m sure the police could call and tell us if they find her,” she said, waving a hand, and with that, she and Cage left the room. Bellamy stared after them, completely gobsmacked by the total disregard they had for their daughter’s wellbeing, and he began to understand why Murphy might have anger issues, if that was how he was raised.

One by one, everyone filed out, Jaha and Diyoza both walking with Wells, and Raven striding out on her own, until it was only Bellamy, Clarke and Murphy left in the sitting room. Murphy was hovering worriedly around his cousin, unsure how to comfort her, or even if she wanted comforting, but when he put his hand on her knee, she reached out and gripped his fingers like her life depended on it.

Bellamy wished he could be that person for her, but he couldn’t, not until he figured out who had killed two people and kidnapped a child. He glanced over at the thing his eyes had caught on earlier again and decided that it was bizarre enough to bring up, even if it was just to distract Clarke from her distress.

“What’s that?” He asked, pointing to a blank spot on the wall.

“Uh, gilded wallpaper.” Murphy deadpanned.

“Yeah. So what’s missing?”

He looked at the space again. “Oh.”

Clarke caught his expression and turned to look as well, shock crossing her face when she saw the space where a painting was clearly supposed to be. She got to her feet, a little wobbly, but otherwise okay, and walked towards it. “It was here the other day, I’m sure of it.”

“It definitely was, I remember thinking it looked familiar.”

She hummed thoughtfully. “That makes sense. It’s stolen, you see. Well, sort of - it was one of the paintings seized by the Nazis, still presumed missing - they’ve been looking for it, and a few others like it, advertising it in the papers - but it’s been here all the time. One of the people Dante sold information through acquired it somehow, and ended up giving it to him as a favour. It’s a Klimt; incredibly valuable, worth at least 150 million, maybe more because people believe it’s lost, but Dante never wanted to sell it. He wanted it as a trophy.”

“Right.” Bellamy said, nodding. “So where is it?”

“I don’t know.” Her eyebrows drew together. “I can’t think of anyone in this house who’d actually want it. None of us are exactly strapped for cash, and it’s hard to sell things like that without being caught, you have to really know what you’re doing.”

“Would Cage?”

“Maybe. Diana, more likely, but I don’t know why they _would._ She already admitted she’s trying to steal the business, why would she go out of her way to fence a painting as well?”

“Spite?”

“No - Diana’s a go big or go home type of person, she’s not going to steal paintings just to stick it to Dante’s memory.” Murphy scratched his nose. “I actually can’t think of anyone in the house who would do that.”

Bellamy filed that information away for future use and reached for Clarke’s hand. She flinched at his touch before immediately leaning into it.

“You okay?” He murmured.

She closed her eyes, breathing in slowly. “I will be. When we find the person who did this.”

“Clarke-”

“She was my _mother_ Bellamy. And I hated her sometimes, but she was still my _mother._ How could any of us have done this? Jaha’s her husband, Wells is her son, Murphy’s her nephew, Cage is her _brother,_ this is a _family,_  and this is who we are. _This_. This destruction is the Wallace legacy, and I don’t want it, I don’t, I don’t want it, I-” Her breath hitched and she let go of him to cover her face with both her hands, and then Murphy was on his feet, pulling her into a protective hug.

“We’ll get them, Clarke. Okay? Bellamy can do it.” And the way he looked at Bellamy over Clarke’s shoulder was so sincere that Bellamy realised that he wasn’t just saying it for her benefit; he really believed it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Marcus arrived not twenty minutes later with three police cars in tow.

Bellamy handed over the key to the officers so they could investigate the crime scene themselves, and he and Marcus decided to try and retrace Abby’s final steps.

“What led her to Dante’s office, to the safe?” Marcus pondered, standing over Abby’s chaise in the lounge of the east wing - the place she had been the last time anyone had supposedly seen her alive. Unless one of them was lying, of course.

Bellamy took a knee next to the couch and bent so he could see beneath it. A small slip of paper caught his eye, and he fished it out, drawing it into the light. It was small, charred around the edges, and there was a swirling font across one side.

“What is it?”

He squinted at it. “Looks like… the remains of a birth certificate.”

“Odd.” Marcus remarked.

“What about this case _isn’t_ odd?” He asked, pocketing the evidence.

“Point taken.” He snapped his fingers. “Speaking of which, I forgot to mention: Josephine’s interrogation revealed something interesting. She said she had an alibi for Charlotte’s disappearance.”

“Oh? What?”

“That’s just the thing - she said she _had_ an alibi, but she _flatly refused_ to tell us what it was.”

That _was_ interesting. “Why not?”

“Don’t know. She just kept saying, ‘arrest me if you want, but I have an alibi’ and repeating that she hadn’t seen Charlotte at all after she’d walked her to her room with Shaw. Kept complaining that she missed her piano too, something about having an idea for a song that she really wanted to try out.” Marcus sighed. “I do envy people with that gift - those who happen to be light fingered enough to play well - I’ve always been too heavy-handed for the piano myself.”

Something fell into place in Bellamy’s brain, and the frustrated fog that had been cloaking it for the last few days fell away, as every single little thing that had been niggling at him suddenly became clear.

“Light fingers.” He said, scrubbing his hands down his face as he jogged out of the room. “I’m a fucking idiot. _Light fingers.”_

Kane’s footsteps were audible behind him, but he barely heard them, too immersed in his own whirling thoughts. He kicked the door to the ballroom open and sought out the piano, standing rigid and beautiful to one side of the room. For some reason he hadn’t noticed the last time he was in here that it was a _grand_ piano, probably because Josephine was ostentatiously draped across it. But if it _was_ a grand piano, that meant that the lid _should-_

“Oh my god.” Kane muttered behind him.

Within the belly of the piano were at least thirty pieces of jewellery, five gold bookends, two crystal ashtrays, and the very painting Bellamy had been pondering the absence of not forty minutes earlier.

“What is all this?!” Kane asked.

“Lola Légère.” Bellamy said. “Josephine is _Lola Légère.”_

“The catburglar?” Marcus looked into the piano again, fascinated. “Seriously?”

“Little things have been bothering me since I got here - the conspicuous lack of certain objects around the house, the fact that someone who supposedly writes songs for a living spends most of her time lying _on top_ of the piano, listening to records instead of singing or composing, and her goddamn last name.”

“Lightbourne?”

Bellamy shook his head in awe. “Lightbourne is light as in glowing, but légère in French is light as in slight, petit, not heavy. _Light fingered._ She was waving it in our faces the whole time. She’s a thief. She’s _the_ thief.”

Marcus sat down on the piano stool with a thunk. “You’ve got to be kidding me. We’ve got one of the most notorious thieves in Europe in our custody and we did it _by accident?!”_

“Honestly, it makes it even clearer that she’s innocent, at least of the murder.” Bellamy said, beginning to pace up and down as he put it all together. “Dante dying only brings police attention that she doesn’t want, not to mention that she clearly only married him so that she had easier access to the richer members of society. And it’s an excellent cover, too; no-one’s going to suspect the young, ditzy, gold-digging wife of _Dante Wallace_ of stealing their valuables. I’ll bet you any of the jewels in that piano that she was stealing something when Charlotte went missing as well, that’s why she’s so certain she has an alibi but she refuses to explain herself. And she was in custody when Abby was killed, so there’s no way she had anything to do with that.”

“Unless she had an accomplice?”

“No. She wasn’t the type. She’s too much of a wildcard. There’s no way anyone, particularly anyone in this house, would be conspiring with her. And she’s too greedy to want to share any of this.”

Marcus frowned, leaning forward to scan the things under the piano strings again. “This is all just things she’s stolen from _this_ place. Where are all the stolen artefacts from Europe and London and America?”

“In the house, or do you think she’d have somewhere further away that she could access?”

“She seems like the kind to play things close to the chest, don’t you think?”

“You’re right, she wouldn’t want to be apart from her precious stolen goods.” Bellamy realised.

The two of them made their way down the hall, past the office where the policemen were still examining everything, and into Josephine Wallace’s room.

“If I were a French master thief, hiding all my things from my husband and the people in this house, where would I put them?” Marcus muttered to himself, turning in a slow circle and taking in the surroundings.

Bellamy was doing the same, gazing darting over every surface in an attempt to find something suspicious. He opened the door to the walk-in wardrobe and started pushing through the clothes and searching behind the racks, but he was coming up empty. It wasn’t until he looked up, however, that he noticed it.

“Kane?” He called out, jerking his chin towards the ceiling. “Do you see what I see?”

Marcus ducked into the small room with him, eyes up. “Yes I do.”

There was a trapdoor in the wardrobe ceiling.

He ran his fingers along it, searching for the catch, and when he pressed it, the door swung open and a ladder came into view. He pulled it down and was halfway up, squinting into the dark, when Marcus tapped his elbow, capturing his attention. He was holding out a torch. Bellamy took it, turning it on, and climbed up into the hidden room.

Once up there, he swung the torch around until he found what he was looking for - a lamp. He flicked it on, and suddenly the room was illuminated. It wasn’t huge, and the ceiling was low, but it was stacked full of artefacts - jewellery, gold, paintings, plates, items he couldn’t identify but looked like they should be in a museum, diamonds - it was _insane_ how much stuff she’d managed to hide.

Marcus lifted himself up after him, whistling lowly at the treasure trove. “This is…”

“Yeah.” Bellamy said, just as a speechless.There were a few pens on the floor by his shoe, and he wondered whether they were up here for a reason. Would a woman like Josephine keep inventory of her things here, or somewhere else? There was something else too, just peeking out from behind one of the paintings.

He shuffled forward, pushing the frame aside.

A small container of potassium cyanide came into the light.

“Rat poison.” Marcus said from over his shoulder. “Makes sense, if you’re trying to hide a collection this valuable in the roof, you don’t want rats coming in and destroying it all while you’re out trying to fool the family.”

 _Rat poison._ Something about that triggered an idea, but before he had a chance to follow it up, an officer ran into the room, yelling their names.

They left the attic room, carefully closing it up again before they emerged from the wardrobe and greeted the man.

“What is it?” Marcus asked, adjusting his cufflinks.

“It’s Miss Charlotte Wallace, sir, she’s been found.” He panted.

Bellamy’s head jerked up. “Where?”

“On the grounds, an officer was patrolling and saw her feet sticking out from beneath a hedge. She’s unconscious, but she appears otherwise unharmed. But that’s not the only thing, sir.”

Marcus gestured for him to go on as they all began walking towards the centre of the house again.

“We tried to take her to her room, so that she could wake up in her own bed - we didn’t want her to be too frightened - and when we got there… someone had ransacked it.”

 _“Ransacked?”_   Marcus shared a look with Bellamy.

“It’s completely trashed, sir. Drawers pulled out and thrown across the floor, jars upended, pillows torn apart; so we moved her into one of the unoccupied bedrooms instead.”

“Show us.” Bellamy ordered, and the man obliged, taking them through to Charlotte’s bedroom.

He was right, it was utterly destroyed - all her things were scattered on the floor, upside-down, broken, tossed aside - and her bed was a mess of feathers and ripped material.

_Curiouser and curiouser._

He edged forward, but he was barely a few steps into the room before he heard a familiar voice in the doorway.

“You won’t find anything.”

He frowned over at Diyoza, who was leaning against the doorframe casually. “What do you mean?”

She shrugged a shoulder, her hand drifting lazily into her pocket. “Whoever did this was clearly looking for something, and they either found it, in which case, you won’t, or they didn’t, in which case there’s nothing to find.”

Bellamy raised an eyebrow. “You know, you’ve known more about this case than you admit since the beginning. Is there something you want to tell me?”

For the briefest second, hesitation flickered across her features, but then that mildly disinterested expression returned. “Nope. You’re the detective, Mr Blake, I’m sure you can figure it out.”

“If you have information that could help us solve this case, Mrs Diyoza, then I suggest you bring us into your confidence.” Kane said sternly.

She smirked. “No ‘mrs’, it’s just Diyoza. And I don’t think anything I could say at the moment will actually help either of you do anything.”

“Do you _enjoy_ being frustratingly cryptic, or?” Bellamy asked, irritated.

Her smirk only widened. “Sometimes.”

Marcus threw up his hands. “Fine. C’mon, son, we need to check on Charlotte, see if she’s awake - maybe she’ll know something.”

The officer led them down the corridor and into the east wing, noticeably not the south, and through a beautifully carved door, where Charlotte was sitting up in bed, drinking hot chocolate. Clarke and Wells were on one side of the bed and Murphy was on the other. Her parents were nowhere to be seen.

Diyoza had followed them, and she stood off to the side, leaning against a wall and observing. She leaned like that a lot, and Bellamy wondered if it was all forced casualness or if she actually was that relaxed, even in the midst of all this insanity.

Bellamy sat down on the edge of the mattress and smiled gently at the girl. “Hey Holmes. How’re you feeling?”

“I’m okay.” She said, voice small. “I’m a bit dizzy, and I was feeling sick, but I’m doing much better now.”

“Good.” He rubbed her knee soothingly. “Do you remember what happened? How you ended up in the garden?”

“Not really.” She said, squinting a little as if trying to remember. “Did you figure out who did it yet, Watson?”

“I was hoping you could help me with that.” He admitted. “Is there something you know, or something in your notebook that might help us? Did you see something you shouldn’t have, Charlotte?”

Her expression clouded at that. “My notebook is missing.”

“What?”

“I had it with me at dinner, but I don’t have it now. I don’t know where it is.” Tears started filling her eyes and Clarke hummed softly, stroking her hair back in an attempt to calm her down.

 _Whoever did this was clearly looking for something,_ Diyoza’s words echoed in his head. Someone had destroyed Charlotte’s room to find that notebook. And that someone was still in the house. That someone might even be in this _room._

“You can’t remember anything?” Marcus pressed. “Did you see the person who attacked you, do you remember where you were when you were attacked, did you-”

“-we’ll go look for it, okay?” Bellamy interrupted. “Maybe it’s in the garden, where you were found, and the officers just didn’t look hard enough.”

Charlotte managed a watery smile. “Okay.”

Bellamy dragged Kane from the room and downstairs, out into the garden. Kane seethed quietly the whole way. “She knows _something_ Bellamy.”

“If she does, she’s not going to tell us with you ramming questions down her throat, is she?” He pointed out, waving a hand at a nearby officer. “Excuse me, where was the girl found?”

He exhaled explosively. “Way down the back of the garden, near the perimeter. It was one of the men on patrol who found her.”

“Thanks.” Bellamy clapped him on the shoulder and headed for his car. Kane climbed into the passenger seat and they made their way down towards the bottom of the garden, past Raven’s garage and near a neatly trimmed section of topiary hedges. There were some uniforms standing around it, still investigating the area, and when he got out of the car, he approached one of them. “You haven’t seen a notebook anywhere around here have you?”

He shook his head. “What sort?”

“Large, lighter green than the hedges, dog-eared pages?”

“No, sorry. We’ll keep an eye out for it though.”

Bellamy thanked the man and Bellamy walked away, stumbling over a divot in the earth. The mud on his shoe was from a distinct hole - created by a shotgun blast hitting a molehill and blowing it apart. He kicked the dirt off.

“I just stepped on one of those too,” Marcus complained. “This place have a problem with moles?”

“Yeah, the first day I arrived Diyoza was out shooting them…” He trailed off. “Rat poison.”

Marcus seemed to reach his conclusion at the same time. “Diyoza have a garden shed somewhere?”

“Yep.” He sprinted across to Raven’s garage and yanked the door open. Raven, who was working on a car inside, yelped in fear, before she realised who it was. She looked like she had half a mind to scold him for scaring her, before she saw the expression on his face, and the man behind him.

‘What’s wrong?” She asked, tightening her grip on her spanner.

“Not sure yet. Where are the things Diyoza keeps down here, what shelf?” He asked urgently, and she gestured at it, confused. He ran his fingers over the jars and implements there, checking every label until he found the one he was looking for. An identical bottle to the one he’d seen in Josephine’s roof. He pulled it out, turning it over in his hands, and noticed that it was only half-full.

Raven looked concerned, but she didn’t know why his heartbeat was suddenly pounding in his ears. She put the spanner down. “Is that…?”

“Cyanide.” Bellamy breathed. “Diyoza has cyanide.”

Raven frowned. “Why is that important? No-one was poisoned with cyanide, were they? Why does Diyoza having some matter?”

“I’ll explain later. She said she was out of the house this morning, at an appointment, but she could have had time before that… and Charlotte was only just found, she could have been trying to move her somewhere and abandoned her when she was spotted. It checks out, she could have done this.”

“Diyoza?” Raven’s eyes widened. “No, she wouldn’t. Dante, I could believe, but she wouldn’t kill Abby, she wouldn’t _hurt_ Charlotte! She wouldn’t!”

“I don’t know, I… the last time I saw her she was…” He trailed off, thinking. “Oh my god. She was with Charlotte.”

They leapt back into the car and sped towards the house, pulling up in a shower of gravel. Clarke ran out of the house, eyes wild. “What’s wrong?”

He jogged towards her, hand closing around her arm like he could protect her somehow if he just held her close enough. “Where’s Diyoza?”

“I don’t know, why?”

“Bellamy!” Marcus yelled, drawing their attention his way.

He was pointing towards the lane.

A car was speeding away from the house, going right for the open gate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Warnings: Murder, the death of Abby Jaha, minor injuries to Charlotte.
> 
> SO! WHADDYA THINK? Did Diyoza do it? Did someone else? What on earth is going on?!?! 
> 
> Only one chapter to go my dudes, and HOLY SHIT is it intense. 
> 
> I hope you're still enjoying it, and I hope you know that your kudos and comments make me happier than Josephine with a stolen necklace.


	7. Wretched Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Grande Finale! 
> 
> The murderer is revealed...
> 
> ...some people die...
> 
> ...and the Wallace Family web begins to untangle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> today's character poster is [CLARKE](https://talistheintrovert.tumblr.com/post/187060461995/chapter-7-wretched-things-its-charlottes), and you can find all the brilliant artwork lindsey did for this fic [HERE!](https://chase-the-windandtouch-the-sky.tumblr.com/post/186306001668/chase-the-windandtouch-the-sky-in-a-pitch-black)
> 
> chapter warnings for today are at the bottom, click the "more notes" link if you need to check for triggers or want to spoil the deaths in the finale for yourself.
> 
> Also, because I promised Lindsey I would post them - when she was drawing the characters, she asked for little phrases to describe each suspect, and because i'm a ridiculous excuse for a human being, i decided to make all the phrases read like crackposts - so here they are, for your viewing pleasure:
> 
>  **WELLS:** innocent and homosexual  
>  **MURPHY:** Angry Boi™  
>  **CHARLOTTE:** lil sherlock holmes wannabe  
>  **CAGE:** A SHADY FUCK  
>  **DIANA:** cold, manipulative bitch  
>  **JAHA:** got a skewed sense of justice but seems calm and collected at least  
>  **ABBY:** just…. A Mess  
>  **SHAW:** seems friendly enough but is definitely capable of getting down in the shit  
>  **JOSEPHINE:** not as squeaky clean as she tries to appear  
>  **RAVEN:** snarky mechanic with a murky history  
>  **FINN:** obsessive ex boyf, massive douche canoe  
>  **DIYOZA:** LEGEND. Like, definitely capable of murder, but still a legend  
>  **CLARKE:** looks pretty guilty but we don’t have all the facts (which are?) bellamy loves her
> 
> i don't know if that'll help anyone figure out who the murderer is, but it made lindsey laugh, and that's good enough for me.

_“We men are wretched things.”_  
**Homer**

 _“People in the dark are quite different, aren’t they?”_  
**Agatha Christie, A Murder is Announced**

* * *

 

 

 

 

_**Cairo, 1943** _

After their argument, Bellamy tried to talk to Clarke. He tried calling, tried stopping by her apartment, tried writing letters, but she never picked up, never opened the door, and the letters returned unopened.

It wasn’t until two weeks later that he found out why:

She left.

The morning after their argument, she’d just packed up all her things and got on the next train to the coast. Presumably she took a plane from there to America, or wherever her family was, and she had left no forwarding address or means of contact.

She was just… gone.

Bellamy was thrown into a horrible depression after that; he spent most of his days down at the various gin joints, getting blind drunk and trying to forget her name. It wasn’t until Lincoln, Miller and Bryan came down and found him one night, asking where Clarke had been, that he truly realised how destroyed he was.

They took him home, sobered him up, and in the early light of dawn, when not one of them had had a wink of sleep, he told them everything - about who she was, about Pike, the whole story.

Miller was furious on his behalf, and upset that a woman he considered a friend was gone, and Bryan was politely sympathetic. Lincoln was stoic. Lincoln was always stoic, but in this case, it meant that he was angry, both on Bellamy’s behalf, and his own.

Clarke had inserted herself into all their lives, and then in the space of one evening, she’d carved her way out again. It left a noticeable hole behind.

Lincoln got a job with the OSS - Pike offered him one, when Bellamy turned it down. Bellamy remained working in Cairo for most of the remainder of the war, largely trying to rebuild places that the fighting broke down. In 1945, he travelled through Europe, trying to help with the rebuilding in those countries too, and it was in France that he ran into Marcus Kane, who told him of his plans to move to England now that the war was through, and of his job at Scotland Yard. He said being idle didn’t suit him, not now he’d spent the last six years fighting and helping.

He said it was a time for fresh starts.

Bellamy was inclined to agree.

Two months later, he was signing a lease on a place in central London with his name over the door, and Marcus was handing him low level cases under the table.

It wasn’t long before he gained enough notoriety that people started coming to his doorstep on their own. When he realised he needed a secretary, he happened upon Harper, who was running from her own past, and she was smart and brave and strong and when he offered her a job, she hugged him tighter than he thought possible and promised not to let him down. Not that he ever believed she could.

Nearly a year after that, he caught Monty following one of the marks he’d picked up from Kane. Apparently the guy had wronged Monty and he wanted to get him back. Rather than fight, Bellamy offered to help, and they took the guy down together. Then, of course he brought Monty back to his office for celebratory drinks, and he’d picked up an open case file. He’d just sort of… stuck around, after that. It didn’t help things that he and Harper were completely smitten with each other from the very first moment they met.

He rarely thought of Clarke anymore, tried to put her out of his mind even though his heart still ached.

Bellamy had moved on.

It was a fresh start.

Until it wasn’t.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

_**Weathermere, 1949** _

The three of them watched the car moving along the lane, getting closer and closer to the gate, and Bellamy’s heart jumped into his mouth.

“Clarke, where’s Charlotte?”

She didn’t even have a chance to answer before the familiar figure of Diyoza stepped out of the house and put the barrel of her gun into the gravel, leaning on it like a walking stick. “In that car, Mr Blake.”

His jaw dropped at the sight of her. “But if _you’re_ not with her, then who’s in that car?!”

She raised an eyebrow. “Cage and Diana. They took Charlotte and left - something about not wanting to miss their flights to Italy.”

“Their flights aren’t until tomorrow morning.” Clarke said, and their heads all whipped round again.

The car reached the gate and turned, speeding down the country road, and Bellamy sprung to action. He climbed back into his own car and called out to Kane, “Follow behind, I’m going after them.”

He turned the keys just as Clarke dove into the passenger seat, and rather than tell her not to come, he hit the accelerator and they floored it towards the gate. When he glanced in his rear view to check Marcus was getting in his own car, he glimpsed Diyoza, still just leaning casually against her gun, watching the beginnings of a car chase with an air of almost… boredom.

Clarke was gripping the inside of the door for dear life, and he flexed his fingers on the steering wheel, bracing for the sharp left turn he was about to make.

“Seatbelt.” He said.

“What?”

“Seatbelt, Princess, now.” He ordered, and she grabbed it, getting it buckled just moments before he yanked the wheel and they skidded through the gate. The car righted itself out of the turn and he released the breath he had been holding, only to realise Clarke was frowning over her shoulder. He glanced in the rear view, but Kane hadn’t caught up yet. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, it’s just, when you turned, I thought I felt something hit the back of my chair.”

They were on a fairly straight patch of road, so he took a second to glance behind her, at the backseat and the foot space in front of it, and it was there that he spotted something green sticking out from beneath her seat.

His eyes returned to the road. “Yeah there’s something, it must have hit the seat and then fallen underneath it.”

Clarke twisted in her chair, reaching behind her, fingers stretching until she flicked the green thing closer and she could wrap them around it. She hauled it up into her lap.

“It’s Charlotte’s notebook!” She gasped. “What the hell is it doing in your car?”

He shook his head, eyes still searching the horizon for Cage’s car. “I don’t know, but I have a theory.”

“Wanna share that theory?” She asked, jerking her gaze from the book to his side profile, staring at him.

“Diyoza.”

“What about Diyoza?”

“She put the book in the backseat.”

 _“She_ had the notebook? But why? And why would she give it to you?”

“I…” He spotted something moving as they approached a bend, and he accelerated out of it, catching sight of the car, not 300 feet in front of them. They hadn’t noticed they were being pursued yet, so Bellamy and Clarke still had the advantage. He shifted gears, climbing in speed. “What does it say?”

Clarke frowned, he could see it in the corner of his eye. “You think Charlotte saw something? You think _that’s_ why Diana and Cage took her?”

He almost shook his head. But he couldn’t make himself say what he actually thought. He set his jaw, knuckles going white on the steering wheel. He didn’t want to be right about this. He wanted so badly to be wrong. He looked over at her, just for a second, and he could see the doubt in her own eyes, knew that her thoughts were starting to travel in the same direction. “What does it _say,_ Clarke?”

She hesitated, just for a moment, and then she opened the book, thumbing through entries until she found the one from the days leading up to Dante’s death. She began reading aloud.

_“Sometimes I think it’s a very good thing that Diana doesn’t care about me, because today I was hiding in Grandfather’s office, waiting for something interesting to happen, and I saw her sneak in. She had a needle and she stuck it into the cork in one of his fancy wine bottles. I think she wanted to poison him.”_

Clarke paused, breath hitching. “Bellamy, does this… if Diana poisoned the champagne in Dante’s office, then it wasn’t meant for my mother, it was meant for _him.”_

He only nodded. “Diana was always intending to kill Dante so that she could take over the business. She wanted it to look like natural causes - like he reacted to the wine - but then someone put eserine into his medication and suddenly his death looked suspicious.”

“Wait - someone _wanted_ Dante’s death to be suspicious?”

“Just- just read on, Clarke.” He muttered. They were gaining on the vehicle.

She turned the page.

 _“I thought about telling Grandfather what I’d seen, but then I saw him talking to Aunt Dee. He made her cry. Just like he made Clarke cry six years ago when she came home. He makes everyone so miserable. I think he deserves to die.”_ Clarke clapped her hand over her mouth, and she flicked through to the day Dante died, talking through her fingers. _“Diana is even worse than Grandfather. If he was going to poison someone, he’d tell them first. She wants to do it behind his back. She’s doing it for money. His death should **mean something.** That’s why I poisoned his medication-_ oh my GOD!”

Clarke dropped the book like it was on fire, and it landed on her toes in the footwell before her. Her hands were shaking.

“Bellamy, did-”

He nodded. “Charlotte killed Dante for her family. For the people she actually cared about - you and Diyoza and Murphy and Wells. She killed him in a way she knew would arouse suspicion, because she wanted someone to come and find the poison in his office. She wanted Diana to get caught - two birds with one stone.”

“But…”

“She did it because that’s how she was raised - no real sense of right or wrong, justice is the same as ruthlessness, murder is just a transaction - it’s how Dante works, but more than that, it’s how _Cage and Diana_ work. And she got a fun murder mystery out of it. She could play with her parents’ lives the way they’d spent so long playing with hers.”

Clarke was crying, and he felt like he was going to be sick, but he couldn’t think about any of that now, because Cage’s car suddenly swerved off the main road. It cut through a lane in a field, heading over a large hill. He must have seen them following behind.

“But she went _missing_.” She said, still trying to rationalise it.

“On purpose.” He said softly. “I think she figured out what Josephine was - it wouldn’t have been hard.”

“Josephine?” Clarke asked, surprised.

“She’s a French cat-burglar, I’ll explain later,” they reached the section of hedge Cage had torn through and he pulled the wheel, taking them onto the rougher terrain. “Anyway, she’s got a room in the roof full of stolen goods. I think Charlotte found it. And when she realised that people still hadn’t found Diana’s poison, that no-one was suspicious enough, she snuck back into Dante’s office to find the bottle.”

Realisation dawned on her face. “But before she could do anything with it, someone came in.”

“So she hid in the roof.”

“Yep. What does the notebook say?”

She retrieved it from the floor. _“I hid in one of the cupboards, and then I heard Abby come in. She snuck a piece of paper from the safe and then she left. I wanted to know what it was, so I followed her, and I saw her having an argument with Cage about it. He looked really mad, but she slammed the door in his face. I was scared, so I went and hid in Josephine’s secret museum. I fell asleep, and when I woke up, I could hear people looking for me. I waited until I was sure that no-one was around, and then I snuck back into the office. Abby was dying on the floor. It’s sad, really, but at least it makes things suspicious again. I drank some of the poison from her glass - just enough to make me sick. I’m feeling awfully woozy now. I hope one of them finds me soon.”_

Cage's car was going surprisingly fast as it crested the top of the hill and hurtled down the other side, but Bellamy was still gaining on them.

Clarke was crying and Bellamy felt sick to his stomach. All he wanted was to be wrong, for his theory to be proved incorrect, and instead Charlotte's notebook had confirmed his worst fears.

“She killed him, but she didn’t kill-”

“-Cage killed your mother.” Bellamy said, anger clouding his vision. “Whatever they were arguing about, it got her killed.”

“But… what could she possibly have done that would have made him want to kill her?”

“I don’t think it’s something she was going to do, not necessarily. I think she _knew_ something. Something that he didn’t want anybody else to know.”

Clarke opened her mouth to reply, but before she had a chance, her eyes widened and she clutched at his arm, frantic. "Bellamy, they're heading right for a cliff, if they don't slow down into that turn-"

She was right, but rather than slowing down, the car seemed to be _accelerating._

Bellamy hit the brakes, skidding down the hill.

Cage made to turn the wheel and the car spun, but not fast enough, and the back end went hurtling over the edge of the drop. The last they saw of the car was Cage and Diana through the windscreen, the shock of what was about to happen beginning to dawn on their faces as their vehicle tipped backwards and toppled off the cliff.

Clarke screamed.

The car ground to a halt just shy of the edge.

The two of them scrambled from their seats and Clarke started sprinting towards where the car had disappeared. Bellamy caught up to her just as she reached the cliff, grabbing her around the waist and yanking them both backwards just in time to avoid the debris as a massive explosion rocketed up into the sky.

The air was hot around them, and the blast made the dirt shake as pieces of metal and glass rained down.

Clarke was still trying to fight him off, still trying desperately to reach the edge, to look over and see the remains of the car with her family inside.

Once Bellamy decided it was safe, he let her go, and she crawled to the edge, collapsing on her hands and knees as she stared down at the twisted hunk of burning metal below. Her body was wracked with sobs, and tears were carving paths down her cheeks, fingers scrunching into the grass.

“She was just a child.” She whispered.

Bellamy wiped a stray tear from his own lashes, dropping down next to her. “I know.”

“She didn’t know any better.” She cried, hysterical. “She was just a child, she didn’t know, she… what did we do to her? Bellamy, what did we do, what did _I_   do?! Bellamy, what did we do, what did we do, what did-”

“It wasn’t you.” He grabbed her shaking hands and pulled her into his arms, holding her as tightly as he could. She was rigid and shaking and her sobs swelled through her chest and into his as he held her, rocking gently. “It wasn’t your fault, it wasn’t you. I promise you, Clarke, it wasn’t your fault.”

“She didn’t deserve this!” She screamed, muffled, into his shoulder. _“They_ did, but Charlotte… she never deserved this. Bellamy what has this family _done?_   We turned a child into a murderer! We- _we killed her.”_

He shook his head, pressing his lips against her temple in a feeble attempt to comfort her. “It was Cage and Diana, they did this to her. And Dante. Not you. And all of them are gone. They can’t hurt anyone anymore.”

He kept talking, kept promising, kept trying to make everything better, and even after Marcus pulled up with three police cars in tow and started ordering them to climb down to the rocks below and pick through the remains, Bellamy and Clarke sat there, completely entwined, as he tried desperately to hold her together.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Over an hour later, they arrived back at Weathermere.

Marcus had taken both their statements and sent them on their way, thanking Bellamy for his help with the investigation and promising he would follow them back soon to check on them.

The drive back to the estate had been silent and miserable. Clarke curled up in her seat and pressed her head against the glass, crying quietly the whole way.

She made no move to leave the car, so he walked around to her side and opened the door, offering his hand. She took it, standing up and then collapsing against his chest, clutching at him hopelessly.

Wells and Murphy ran out, stopping when they saw the state of their sister.

“What happened?” Murphy asked, more solemn than Bellamy had ever seen him.

“They’re gone.” He said, shaking his head. “They’re all gone.”

“Gone, what do you mean-” He clapped a hand over his mouth, silencing himself. “No. No, not Charlotte. Not my baby sister. No. NO.”

“I’m so sorry.” Bellamy said, sincere, pressing his face against the crown of Clarke’s head when he felt her shaking again.

Murphy stumbled where he stood, and Wells caught him, holding him up. He led him carefully back inside, and Bellamy followed, picking Clarke up and carrying her into the house.

When they walked into the study, Raven and Jaha were already in there, clearly waiting for good news. The second they saw the state of everyone, however, they knew they wouldn’t be receiving any such thing. Bellamy laid Clarke gently down on a sofa, sitting down next to her so he could stroke her hair while he explained the story to the others. Murphy and Wells both sat by the fire, tears illuminated on their faces. Jaha kept shaking his head like he didn’t believe it, and Raven just looked angrier and angrier with every word.

He was nearly at the end when the door creaked open, and they all turned to see Diyoza step through, closing it after her. Her gun was tucked over her shoulder the way it always was, and she leaned against the wood, tilting her head in their direction.

“You knew.” Bellamy accused her.

She sighed. “Not initially. I suspected, but I didn’t _know._ Not until I read the book.”

“How long did you have it?”

“When she poisoned herself, she dropped the book in the hallway. I found it.”

“So _you_ ransacked her bedroom?”

“No, absolutely not.” She shook her head. “No, she did that.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“It didn’t take her long to realise the book was gone. She went looking for it; tore her room apart trying to find it, but she heard Raven coming down the hall and climbed out the window. The grounds were crawling with police, so she snuck down to the hedges and hid under them, deliberately trying to get found. That way she looked innocent and she could be back in the house without having to sneak around, so she could look for her book. She wanted to get found anyway, it just sped up her plans.” She grinned to herself slyly. “Not the only thing speeding up today, I hear.”

Jaha slammed a fist down on the table. “People have _died_ Diyoza! This isn’t the time for _jokes.”_

Bellamy set his jaw. “Oh.”

Their heads whipped around to face him, but it was Raven who asked. “What?”

He looked over at Diyoza. “You did something to the car.” It wasn’t a question.

She smiled at him. “You _are_ smart.”

“What did you do?!” Wells yelled, half on his feet.

“Cut the brake lines.” She said matter-of-factly, tipping the gun off her shoulder and placing it down on the desk by the door. She walked over to sit in one of the vacant chairs, folding her arms serenely. “It’s less than they deserved.”

“Not Charlotte.” Murphy growled. “She deserved better than that, and you killed her along with them.”

Diyoza shrugged. “She killed a man, kid.”

“You’re disgusting. You’re just as bad as them.” He hissed, and she actually looked offended by his anger, face twisting a little before she schooled it back into her usual mask of detached amusement.

Bellamy blinked.

“There’s something else.” He said, frowning at her contemplatively. “Something you’re hiding.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Charlotte said Dante made you cry. And she saw Cage and Abby arguing before she died. Why would Cage Wallace kill his sister?”

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t know, he already killed one, what’s another to add to the list?”

Clarke’s eyes snapped open and she sat up. “What did you just say?”

Diyoza glanced around at them all, at the horrified expressions on all their faces, and sank back into the armchair, clearly settling in for the long haul. “He didn’t _kill_ Sofia exactly, but he may as well have done. He killed the one thing that gave her any reason to stay alive. Her fiance.”

 _ **“Fiance?!”**_   Wells and Raven said in unison.

“It was a secret - their whole relationship was - or it was supposed to be, until she fell pregnant. She told Dante, but she told him the father had run off and left her to raise it on her own, to keep him safe. But Cage found out. I don’t know how, but he did, and he was disgusted by it. Found them, nearly eight months into her pregnancy, when he walked her home one night. Cage beat him to death, and she went into labour. When I arrived at the hospital, she was screaming and begging me not to let Cage anywhere near her.”

“Why… why would Cage be disgusted by Sofia’s fiance?” Wells asked.

Diyoza looked close to tears. “Because he was foreign. Cage didn’t take well to foreign people. You must remember how supportive he was of the Nazi Party, or how easily he dismissed your father. He accepted you, because you were his blood, but not enough. Never enough.”

Murphy frowned. “But that… that doesn’t make any sense. How foreign could my father be?”

“He isn’t.” Diyoza whispered.

“What are you talking about?”

A single tear slipped down her cheek. “Your father… was a vicious man. He died long before Sofia’s fiance did.”

It felt like everyone in the room was holding their breath, waiting for the penny to drop.

Bellamy got there first. “Oh my god.”

She laughed, watery and bitter. “Points to the detective.”

“What?” Jaha asked, confused.

“Murphy isn’t Sofia’s son.” Bellamy said, not taking his eyes off Diyoza.

“He’s mine.” She whispered.

Someone’s cup fell to the floor and shattered.

Murphy shook his head vehemently. “No. No that’s not true. That can’t be true, it’s not possible.”

Diyoza sniffed. “My ex-husband was a brute, and a thug, and when I found out I was pregnant, I came running to Dante because he doesn’t abandon family. Even if I wasn’t technically family, I still counted, because he did truly love my sister, and no matter how much we disagreed, he would always help me, for her. So when I came back looking for somewhere to hide, he let me. And when Paxton came looking for me in the middle of the night, Dante chased him away. Two weeks later we heard he died under suspicious circumstances, and Dante just kept eating breakfast like it wasn’t news to him. I was indebted. And then... Sofia went into labour, and she died.”

“Did the child die too?” Jaha asked.

“No.” Diyoza clicked her tongue. “Dante pulled me into his office and he… he told me that if I did something for him, that no harm would ever befall my child, and that my debt to him would be considered paid.”

“Tell me you didn’t kill a baby.” Murphy’s eyes widened.

“I would never do that!” She snapped.

“You swapped them.” Bellamy realised. “Dante knew Cage would never raise Sofia’s half-cast child, and no-one outside the four of you knew about Sofia’s fiance, so you pretended that Murphy was her son instead.”

“We did. A few months later, I gave birth, and for the first few months, it didn’t even matter that he wasn’t supposed to be mine, but when Jake started noticing things, I had to start backing away. Dante and my sister raised him for a few years while I stayed away, but a few years later, she died. I came back for the funeral and I begged him to let me take you back.” She was talking directly to Murphy now. “But he refused. Told me I’d made a deal and I couldn’t break it. I stuck around for a few years to help with Clarke and Wells, and to keep an eye on you, but I had to keep my distance. When you were ten, Dante forced Cage to take you. But I couldn’t just leave you, so I… I stayed. I couldn’t bear the idea of leaving you alone with someone like Cage, or Diana, so I just… never left.”

“You had to spent nearly thirty years pretending that your son didn’t sleep just down the hall from you?” Clarke looked heartbroken on her behalf. “Diyoza… I’m so sorry.”

“Not your fault.” She smiled sadly, wiping her tears away.

There was a short pause, and then Wells raised a hand.

“What happened to Sofia’s child?”

She winced. “I took her with me for the first couple of years, but when my sister died, I knew I couldn’t take her back to the house. It was too dangerous. So I gave her to a friend of mine, promised him I wouldn’t abandon him, that I’d keep him close and make sure he never ran out of money for the two of them. Then, once you kids had grown up a little, Dante wanted a tutor for you, and I knew a teacher, so I reached out. Sinclair came to live in the house above the garage, and he brought my niece’s daughter with him.”

Raven clapped her hands over her mouth.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.” Murphy said.

“I’m-” Wells made a face.

“Dante knew, but Cage didn’t and that was good enough for him. As long as Sinclair managed never to spill the beans, it worked. Then, a few years ago, Sinclair told Dante that Raven deserved to be recognised as a Wallace.” She faced Raven. “Dante told him no, and told him that if he tried to tell anyone, even you, who you were, that he would have him killed. Sinclair was considering doing it anyway - I don’t think he knew how serious he was - until Jake died a few days later, just for wanting a divorce.”

Bellamy glanced anxiously at Clarke, but she didn’t look surprised, just despondent.

“So he left?” Raven asked, incredulous.

“No, I told him to go. I promised him I’d watch out for you, and you were an adult by then, so he didn’t need to stay here. Dante was getting trigger happy and I pointed out that you’d prefer it if he lived than if he died a noble death on your behalf. So he left. I wrote him a letter the day Dante died; he’s coming down to see you next week. He was going to explain it all himself, but I guess now I’ve saved him some time.”

“Holy shit.” Murphy breathed. “Every time I think this family has run out of secrets, things get completely fucking insane.”

“You’re our cousin.” Wells pointed out to Raven, trying to find the good in the situation, as always.

She laughed, in shock. “Oh my god, you’re right. I have a family.”

“You’ve always had a family, Rave,” Clarke murmured, reaching out and squeezing her hand.

“And I’m your uncle.” Murphy said. “Gross.”

Raven snorted.

“But, wait.” Bellamy frowned. “Not to step on this nice moment, but… you did _all that_ to protect two children, kept those secrets for decades, put your own life on hold for them, and then you let Charlotte get into the car with Cage and Diana? You murdered three people?”

“They murdered people. Diana tried to poison Dante, and then when Abby tried to find the proof of Raven’s real birthright to get her the money she deserved, Cage discovered it and told his wife, and Diana tried to poison her too. Succeeded, even. She met her in his office to _talk_ and poured her the poison, and then Cage barged in and slit her throat with a letter opener. It’s impossible to say which killed her first. Diana was furious, told him that if he had just left them alone, that Abby’s death would have looked like the result of an overdose of alcohol brought on by stress and grief. After I read through Charlotte’s book, I eavesdropped on them - it always worked for her - and I heard everything. They were evil people, fueled only by greed, and they deserved to die. I don’t feel any regret for what I did.”

He eyed her carefully.

“I don’t believe it.”

Diyoza raised an eyebrow at him, chin jutting out defiantly. “Believe what you want, it’s none of my concern.”

“Where is she?”

She reached for the bottle of brandy by the window and poured herself a glass. “As far as anyone is concerned, she’s lying at the bottom of a cliff with her murderous parents.”

Clarke gasped.

Bellamy put his hand over the lip of the glass, halting its trajectory. “Where is she, Diyoza?”

She shrugged. “Halfway to America by now. I took her to the docks in the confusion, left her with a friend of mine.”

“So you’ve just set her loose on another continent?” Jaha asked, disapproving.

“I’m flying out there next week.” She pulled her glass out from under Bellamy’s hand and sipped. “It’s not her fault, she didn’t know any better. We’ll be far away from Dante’s influence over there, in one of the states he no longer has his claws in. I’ll get her the help she needs. I’ll raise her the way she deserves to be raised. The way all of you deserved to live.”

“What if she’s just a killer?”

“Then that’s my problem.” She said pointedly. “You got the easy job - your son is the best of all of us.”

Jaha shut his mouth and leaned back in his chair, mulling it all over.

“I’m a detective, Diyoza.” Bellamy stood up and started pacing slowly up and down. “I have a responsibility to uphold the law, to hand you over to the police for what you’ve done.”

“Do it if you must. Just promise me you won’t tell them about Charlotte. As far as they know, she died in that wreck, and that’s all they need to know.”

He scrubbed both hands through his hair, tousling it the way he always did when he was stressed and searching for answers.

“Or…” Clarke started. “We could tell them everything that Cage and Diana and Charlotte did, and then let them think they all died in that crash; justice has been served. It’s not ideal, but Bellamy, it’s… surely it’s better than sending them after a twelve year old girl?”

Bellamy smiled affectionately at her. “That’s exactly what I was thinking, yeah.”

Diyoza looked up, shocked. “You’re not turning me in?”

“I like you, Diyoza. You’re a good person - a cold, ruthless person, but a good one all the same - and somehow you’ve managed to hold this family together for years, under the weight of everything Dante and Cage have done. What you did wasn’t right, but it was a good thing. You shouldn’t be punished for that. Just like Charlotte shouldn’t be jailed for not knowing the difference between good and evil when raised in a house like this.” He stuck his hand out for her to shake. “As far as I know, Cage took a corner too fast and his car ended up at the bottom of a cliff, with two other murderers inside.”

Diyoza stood and took his hand, shaking it. “You take care of her.”

He glanced over at Clarke, meeting her eyes. “I will.”

“I mean it.” She crushed his knuckles a little. “You take care of each other, or so help me god there’ll be another murder.”

“Too soon, Mom.” Murphy deadpanned.

“This family is so fucking weird.” Wells said, smiling despite it all.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

_**Blake Private Investigation Agency, London, 1949** _

Bellamy handed Charlotte’s notebook over to Kane and gave him enough evidence of Cage and Diana’s crimes to close the case.

Kane released Shaw from jail that afternoon, and when he returned to the house, they filled him in on everything that had happened since he was arrested. Almost immediately afterwards, he announced his affair with Raven to the remains of the family, and expressed their intense desire to get married and move as far away as possible. Raven suggested Manchester.

Marcus charged Josephine for burglary, and despite being on trial for her crimes, she was loving the attention - her face splashed all over the newspapers and her name in everybody’s mouth.

Jaha moved to Birmingham within the month and started a new branch of Mendax, under his own name rather than Dante’s.

Bellamy offered to stay for as long as possible while Clarke got her affairs in order, promising that he could work from Weathermere and liaise with Monty and Harper in London. Instead, she asked if she could stay with him while she went through everything - because the lawyers were in London, she said - and within the week, she’d moved into his tiny apartment.

As soon as she had access to Dante’s enormous fortune, she used half of it to cut them off from all his shady businesses and dealings. She sold every piece of art and furniture that he’d received through shady means, and completely cleaned the Wallace name of any connection to crime.

With the still incredibly sizeable fortune leftover once that was done, she gave enough money to Raven and Shaw for them to buy a house up in Manchester, right down the street from Sinclair’s school.

She gave some to Murphy so he could travel, finally see the world however he wanted to. Then she offered Wells the house, as she wasn’t living in it anymore; told him that his boyfriend could move into Weathermere and no-one would ever know about it, unlike in London, where there were eyes everywhere. He accepted, on the condition that she visit him at least once a week, as the house was far too big for just the two of them to live in all on their own. She promised him she would, and made Murphy and Raven promise they’d visit too.

Clarke slotted back into Bellamy’s life like she never left, except that they weren’t together yet, just friends. Friends who were in love with each other and had been for seven years. It was a tricky balancing act.

They started slow.

She slept in his spare room for the first few weeks, except for the occasions when they fell asleep on the couch together.

When she wasn’t meeting with the lawyers or checking on the many businesses, she was sitting on his desk, leaning over him as he leaned over the latest case.

She made friends with Monty almost immediately, and Harper adored her and taunted Bellamy about it relentlessly.

He wanted to kiss her all the time, wanted to tell her he loved her, but he didn’t want to rush her, not after everything she’d been through. Which is why it took him by surprise when one night, while he was poring over the facts of a cheating case, Clarke yanked his chair out from behind the desk, climbed into his lap, and kissed him full on the mouth.

Nat King Cole was crooning over the radio - the very same song that had been playing the first time Clarke stepped into his office - but Bellamy could barely hear it over the roaring of the pulse in his ears. Clarke kissed him long and hard and passionate, and the song was nearly over when they finally came up for air.

“Um.” He said against her lips. “Hi.”

She pulled back a little, hands finding his curls. “Hey.”

“What was that for?”

“I got tired of waiting for you to do it.” She complained. “I love that you’re being so respectful, but I really don’t need my boundaries respected right now, Blake. I need you to hold me, and go to sleep next to me, and kiss me just because you can. I need _you.”_

“You have me. Always.”

She harrumphed. “I know that, and I love being your friend again, but I want more than just that, and I-”

“-Princess.” He interrupted what was about to become one of her familiar anxious ramblings and curled his arms around her waist, keeping her exactly where she belonged. “That’s what I want too.”

“Oh.” She said softly.

She tilted her head forward, nudging their foreheads together, and he pressed a kiss to the corner of her lips.

“You could have waited until I came home.” He pointed out.

“Actually, I’m done waiting, and I’m done making you wait for me.” She murmured with conviction. “Those six years were the worst years of my life, and I have no intention of letting you go again.”

“I mean, you might have to let me go at some point, if we want to eat, or ever sleep in a bed again.” He teased, and she smacked his shoulder lightly. He sobered up, staring into her eyes, sparkling in the dim light of his office. “I love you.”

“I know. And yet you still couldn't discount me as a suspect.” She mimicked back his own words from so many weeks ago.

He groaned. “Are you ever going to get over that?”

“Not a chance.” She said, tugging at his lapels. “It’s exactly why I love you so much. You do the right thing, no matter what.”

“I make a few exceptions, where you’re concerned.”

“No, you don’t. Letting Charlotte go was the right thing to do, Bellamy.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“If you had killed them… I didn’t think you did, but on the off chance you had, I… I was willing to cover it for you. To take you and run away. I would have thrown all my principles out the window for you, Clarke Griffin.”

“Good thing I’m not a killer then, isn’t it?”

“Good thing.” He said distractedly, right before he kissed her again. She smiled into his mouth and sighed when his hand slid up her spine.

When they drew apart, Clarke smiled sweetly, kissing his forehead. “Dance with me?”

It took him a second to get his bearings, and he realised that the Julie London version of _Why Don’t You Do Right_ was playing.

“You’ll have to let go of me,” he warned her.

“Not a chance.” She climbed off him, holding his hand and dragging him to his feet. She stepped as close as possible, resting her head on his shoulder and pressing her whole body against his. “See?”

He smiled into her hair.

For a moment, they simply danced, letting the music wash over them.

Clarke hummed along, and Bellamy dipped her.

She laughed, light and carefree and full of so much love. When he lifted her back upright, she kissed him, and somehow they ended up against the wall, her hands in his hair and his underneath her dress, and then they heard the main door unlatch.

“Bellamy? Clarke? You here? We brought dinner, we figured this case might be a late one.” Monty called through the door. Bellamy was inwardly thankful that he was the one relaying the message; Harper definitely would have just barged in, mainly so that she could say ‘I told you so’.

He dropped his head into the crook of Clarke’s neck, panting, and she looped her arms around his shoulders. “We should really go out there.”

“Or we could stay here and never leave.”

“If we stay here much longer, Harper will-”

As if on cue, the door swung open and Harper leaned against the doorframe, grinning widely at them. However, she didn’t tease them like he expected her to. Instead, she just beamed and gestured towards the living room. “C’mon lovebirds, eat something. You can’t live off of love alone.”

“They’ll certainly try.” A familiar snarky voice said.

Clarke and Bellamy glanced at each other in surprise and followed her out to the table, where Murphy, Wells, Wells’ boyfriend, Raven, Shaw and Monty were all sitting, plating up the food.

“What are you all doing here?” Clarke asked, emotional.

Murphy shrugged. “Family dinner.”

“But… you’re travelling.”

“I got bored. Turns out the rest of the world isn’t as exciting as our insane, twisted little family. Plus I hate most people. Present company excepted, of course.” He paused. “Oh, wait, I hate Wells.”

“Obviously.” Wells grinned, elbowing him.

“You must be Roan,” Bellamy stuck his hand out to Wells’s boyfriend.

“And you’re Clarke’s detective.” He said, with the mischievous air of someone who knew exactly how to tease everyone around him.

“Yes I am,” he said, earnest to a fault. He was Clarke’s first and a detective second, and he didn’t have to feel bad about that anymore.

Wells picked up the thread of conversation where Murphy left it. “We got tired of sitting around in Dante’s big old house. We’re remodelling some of the rooms-”

“-the ones people were murdered in.” Raven interjected, popping a piece of fish in her mouth.

He pretended he hadn’t heard her. “But it’s taking a while, and we had to come into town today anyway to look at furniture and paint swatches, so we thought we may as well visit.”

“And you?” Clarke asked Raven.

She smirked. “Shaw wanted to see you all.”

Clarke sat down on the couch, dragging Bellamy into the space next to her and keeping her hand somewhere on his person at all times. Murphy grinned wolfishly at them.

“So, how long did it take?” He asked, levelling a cool stare at his cousin.

“An hour ago.” She said, deflating.

“Wow, over a month, I’m impressed.” He said, sounding pleasantly surprised. “I would have put the entire Wallace fortune on you breaking sooner than that. I was half-expecting to get here and find you with a litter of Blake babies.”

“And that’s why Dante left all the money to me.” Clarke quipped.

“And why you should probably have let Sinclair finish teaching you biology.” Raven snarked.

Murphy snorted and tossed a bread roll at both of them in turn. “We’re teasing Clarke and Bellamy right now, not me.”

“But there’s so much more to work with when we tease you,” Raven threw the roll right back at him.

“Anyway,” he narrowed his eyes at her, daring her to challenge him, “Clarke has he invited you to his sister’s wedding yet?”

“We literally only kissed an hour ago.” She pointed out.

Murphy sipped his drink, raising an eyebrow.

Bellamy sighed. “Yeah, I asked her last week.”

Raven nearly choked on her food, and Murphy started laughing uproariously.

“Just ignore them,” Bellamy leaned in close, lips against her jaw, “they won’t be laughing when I kiss you all night until they leave.”

“Alright, alright, we surrender!” Raven scrunched up her face. “You’re so in love, it’s disgusting, get a room.”

“We have a room. In fact, we have an entire office, you came to _us.”_   He gestured around them.

“Good point.” Wells said sternly, glaring good-naturedly at his family.

“Fine, Wells, your boyfriend seems nice, how mu-”

“-one more word and I’ll tell everyone about the girl you met in France.” Wells retorted.

Murphy’s mouth snapped shut.

“Well we’re definitely getting back to that,” Clarke said, pointing her chip at him, “but in the meantime, it really is nice to see you Roan, how are you adjusting to Weathermere?”

He shrugged. “It’s huge, and people were murdered there. We can throw parties if we want, where no-one feels alone or frightened for being who they are, and everyone can sleep with anyone. Also, it’s incredibly haunting and empty, so I get to walk around like I own the place. I love it.”

Bellamy laughed and shook his head, grinning over at Wells. “Have you checked that you’re not in love with Dorian Gray?”

“It has occured to me, yeah.” He replied, grinning right back.

For a few minutes, they ate in silence. Not the stretched out, uncomfortable silences from Bellamy’s stay at Weathermere, but an easy, companionable quiet punctuated only by smiles and the occasional comment on the food.

Clarke sipped her whiskey and leaned back on the couch, resting her head over Bellamy’s arm around her shoulder.

“Diyoza wrote to me. I got the letter yesterday. Apparently Charlotte’s learning well, and the doctors are working on a plan for the future.” She said.

The others looked up, surprised.

“Really?” Murphy asked, a genuine note of worry in his voice.

“Yeah. And I was thinking, when we go across for the wedding, we might visit them, see how they’re settling in.” She said, looking over at Bellamy for confirmation.

He kissed her cheek. “That’s an excellent idea, Princess.”

“Plus if you’re gone for longer, we’ll get a break from all the built up tension you two have been dragging around.” Harper snarked.

“Like you can talk.” Bellamy raised his eyebrows. “When was the last time you went to your own place for dinner instead of staying here or going to Monty’s?”

“Shut up, we’re nowhere near as bad as you two.”

“It’s true, you two are the worst.” Murphy agreed.

“So, John, who’s this girl?” Clarke asked.

“Like I said, the worst.” He doubled down, but everyone was smiling, and the radio was playing a cheerful tune, and in a small office in central London, a family was being rebuilt from the ground up, and it was taking no time at all.

They all stayed until the early hours of the morning, and Clarke made sure they were all staying in hotels close by, so they could meet up for lunch again before disappearing to their own places again.

Monty and Harper were the last to leave, making sure to help pack up the kitchen before they did, and they made sure to make fun of them the whole time.

“You know, I know I said that you weren’t your family,” Bellamy said, after they’d waved the couple away, “but if you were, it’d be a compliment.”

“It’s not just being a Wallace anymore.” She agreed. “My family is so much better than the Wallace name. It’s the Jahas and maybe Roan, and Diyoza, and her illegitimate son, and the secret child of Sofia Wallace, and her fiance, and your funny, strong secretary and your smart, kind, perfect business partner, and maybe a tired police chief. And my disgruntled private eye with his big heart and a proclivity for looking abnormally good in trenchcoats and hats.”

She moved to turn off the radio, but he caught her hand. “We never finished our dance.”

“Mm,” her gaze drifted to his lips, “but is dancing really what you want to be doing? Six years is a lot of time to make up for.”

“Yeah, it is. But I intend to be by your side a lot longer than six years.” He twirled her around and back again, catching her in his arms. “We’ve got time.”

“Time, huh? Time for what?”

“Whatever the hell we want.”

“And you want to dance?”

“I just want you. Always.”

She kissed him softly, and their dancing slowed to an easy swaying to the song, one Bellamy hadn’t heard before.

The tune faded out, and then Cole Porter started crooning his old classic, and Clarke sang along, lips still brushing against his as she did.

_“...anything goes.”_

“I didn’t know you could sing. You always used to hum, you hum all the time, but you never sing.”

“I’m full of surprises.” She teased.

“Good. Because I want to know all of them.”

“That’s gonna cost you a lot of whiskeys.” She said, and it felt like they were right back in Cairo, waking up next to each other for the very first time, except this was more, this was better. In that moment, Bellamy would have bought every whiskey in the world, just to keep that small, adoring smile on her lips. Because this time they knew exactly who they were, and they had their whole lives ahead of them, crooked family and all. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Warning: Death of two bastards, implied death of a child, car accident, some baby-swapping 
> 
> SO.
> 
> WHAT DO Y'ALL THINK???!!
> 
> I HOPE YOU LIKED IT!! AND THAT IT MADE SENSE!! AND THAT IT WAS WORTH THE WAIT!! Your kudos and comments make me happier than Bellamy dancing to 40s music while his soulmate sings along. And that's pretty darn happy my dudes. <3


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